The corpse of the past lay upon Europe; it lies there still at this moment.

The year 1848 opened a grave wherein to throw that corpse.

It is this grave that has been taken for a gulf.
In 1848 all that still held to the past, all that still survived of the body, had a close view of this grave.

Not only the kings upon their thrones, the cardinals under their hats, the judges in the shadow of their guillotines, the captains on their war-horses, were thrown into commotion; but he who had any interest whatever in what was about to disappear; he who was cultivating for his own profit a social fiction, and had an abuse to let out on hire; he who was guardian of some falsehood, doorkeeper of some prejudice, or farmer of some superstition; he who was taking advantage of another, or dealing in usury, oppression and falsehood; he who sold by false weights, from those who falsify a balance to those who falsify the Bible; from the cheating merchant to the cheating priest; from those who manipulate figures to those who traffic in miracles,--all, from the Jew banker who feels that he is more or less Catholic, to the bishop who becomes more or less of a Jew,--all the men of the past inclined their heads towards one another and trembled.
This grave, which was gaping, and into which had nearly fallen all the fictions--their treasure--which have weighed upon men for so many ages, they resolved to fill up.

They determined to wall it up, to pile rocks and stones upon it, and to erect upon the pile a gibbet, and to hang upon this gibbet, all bleeding and dejected, that mighty culprit, Truth.
They determined, once for all, to make an end of the spirit of freedom and emancipation, and to drive back and repress for ever the upward tendency of mankind.
The enterprise was formidable.