That day arrives, that hour, unique, pitiless, and solemn, that supreme hour of duty; the man in the red gown begins to stutter the words of the law; suddenly he perceives that it is not the cause of justice that prevails, but that treason carries the day.

Whereupon he, the man who has passed his life in imbuing himself with the pure and holy light of the law, that man who is nothing unless he be the contemner of unmerited success, that lettered, scrupulous, religious man, that judge in whose keeping the law has been placed, and, in some sort, the conscience of the state, turns towards triumphant perjury, and with the same lips, the same voice in which, if this traitor had been vanquished, he would have said: "Criminal, I sentence you to the galleys," he says: "Monseigneur, I swear fealty to you." Now take a balance, place in one scale the judge, in the other the felon, and tell me which side kicks the beam.
VI EVERYWHERE THE OATH Such are the things we have beheld in France, on the occasion of the oath to M.Bonaparte.Men have sworn here, there, everywhere; at Paris, in the provinces, in the north, in the south, in the cast, and in the west.

There was in France, during a whole month, a tableau of hands raised, of arms outstretched, and the final chorus was: "We swear," etc.

The ministers placed their oaths in the hands of the President, the prefects in those of ministers, and the mob in those of the prefects.

What does M.Bonaparte do with all these oaths?
Is he making a collection of them?
Where does he put them?
It has been remarked that none but unpaid functionaries have refused the oath, the councillors-general, for instance.