All offer themselves.

One of these days we shall have to appoint an assayer of consciences at the Mint.
What! this is what we have come to! What! those very men who supported the _coup d'etat_, those very men who recoiled from the red _croquemitaine_ and the twaddle about Jacquerie in 1852; those very men to whom that crime seemed a good thing, because, according to them, it rescued from peril their consols, their ledgers, their money-boxes, their bill-books,--even they do not comprehend that material interest, surviving alone, would, after all, be only a melancholy waif in an immense moral shipwreck, and that it is a fearful and monstrous situation, when men say: "All is saved, save honour!" The words independence, enfranchisement, progress, popular pride, national pride, French greatness, may no longer be pronounced in France.

Hush! these words make too much noise; let us walk on tiptoe, and speak low; we are in a sick man's chamber.
Who is this man ?--He is the chief, the master.

Every one obeys him .-- Ah! every one respects him, then ?--No, every one despises him .-- Oh! what a plight! And military honour, where is it?
Let us say no more, if you please, of what the army did in December, but of what it is undergoing at this moment, of that which is at its head, of that which is on its head.

Do you think of that?
Does it think of that?
O army of the republic! army that had for captains, generals paid with four francs a day; army that had for leaders, Carnot, austerity, Marceau, unselfishness, Hoche, honour, Kleber, devotion, Joubert, probity, Desaix, valour, Bonaparte, genius! O, French army, poor, unfortunate, heroic army, gone astray in the train of these men! What will they do with it?
whither will they lead it?
how will they occupy it?
what parodies are we destined to see and hear?
Alas! what are these men who command our regiments, and who govern us?
The master--we know him.