Honour and honesty were prejudices of the past.

What has been the consequence?
It is a comment upon despotism, which I hope will not be lost upon those who extol the advantages of personal government, and who would sacrifice the liberty of all to the concentrated energy of one.

The armies of France have been scattered to the winds; the Emperor, who knew not even how a Caesar should die, is a prisoner; his creatures are enjoying their booty in ignoble ease, not daring even to fight for the country which they have betrayed.

The gay crowd has taken to itself wings; an emasculated bourgeoisie, grown rich upon fashionable follies, and a mob of working men, unused to arms, and distrustful even of their own leaders, are cowering beneath the ramparts of Paris, opposing frantic boasts, pitiful lamentations, unskilled valour, to the stern discipline of the legions of Germany, whose iron grasp is contracting closer and closer every day round the vaunted capital of modern civilization.

You know better than we do what is passing in the provinces, but I can answer for it that the Parisians, low as they have fallen, are not so lost to every impulse of honour as to be ready to welcome back in triumph the prime cause of their degradation, the man of December and of Sedan.