Last night, at a public meeting held in commemoration of the 
66th anniversary of the establishment of the first French Republic, 
M. Félix Pyat read a remarkable “lettre aux Mandarins de la 
France,” in which he fiercely denounces the want of moral 
courage displayed under the present regime by the literary class of 
France. In the outlines we propose giving of it, we have 
occasionally swerved from the letter of the original, in order to 
render more strikingly its spirit: 

“In the night which has enveloped France since the invasion of the coup d'état, 
you, gentlemen of the press, are the most lost of souls. You undergo your 
punishment with a terrible patience and submission. You undergo it in silence, as if 
you deserved it; with resignation, as if it was to last forever. Is it possible? For ten 
years not an act, not a cry, not a word of protestation or hope. Strong and weak, 
age and youth, great and little, professor and disciple, all dumb, all crest-fallen. 
Not a single voice in the desert. In the French vocabulary there is no longer a word 
signifying liberty. Englishmen ask us whether French is still spoken in France, and 
we lower our heads. Even the press of Austria girds at you—even that of Russia 
bewails you. An object of pity and scorn for the Cossack himself, this press of 
France! Bonaparte has spit upon the sun and put it out. Who is to kindle again, or 
to replace that dead star? Suns wanting, there remain the volcanoes. If there is to 
be no more light, no more warmth from above, there is still the interior sun, the 
subterranean flame, the ray from below, the fire of the people. Already, we see 
blaze that Vesuvius, and therefore, do not despair.” 

Commencing his review of the French literary world with the 
members of the Institut, Mr. Pyat addresses them thus: 

“Let us begin with those who are most completely dead, with the Immortels. 
(The members of the ‘Institut’ going by the name of the ‘Immortels.’) There they 

are, the chairs, or rather the coffins, of the forty! Shadows of authors, mumbling 
shades of epigrams; defunct minds still galvanized by the reminiscences and the 
regrets of the past. There is he (Guizot), an old Ixion, enamoured of the doctrinary 
mist,?3 pursuing his constitutional chimera, whirling from Gaud to Frohsdorf,@ the 
vicious circle of the monarchial wheel, the symbol, packed in straw, of the 
‘Fusion.’ 24 There is that other wizard, his contemporary (Cousin), retreated from 
the Sorbonne to the land of love, making, like Faust, amends for time lost, with a load 
of three score and more on his back, relapsing into youth, and devoting himself to the 
Margarets of the Fronde,?5 because of having been too much in love with eclecticism at 
the age of twenty! That other fellow there (Thiers), neither old nor young, with 
something unripe and something rotten about him, an oldish child, a petrified 
perpetuum mobile, having fluttered about art, politics and history—having carped at 
the Revolution, celebrated the Empire, and entombed twice the great man? in the 
Déme des Invalides and in his books 26; in one word, the national historian, the Taenia‘¢ 
of history, the Tacitus in ordinary to the cent-gardes?’ licensed by his Majesty, and 
warranted on the part of the Government. And last, not least, that Homer without an 
Iliad (Lamartine), that Belisar without campaigns, who banished barbarian 
schoolmasters only, and sung the capture of Elvire only, historian of Grasiella, poet of 
the Girondins, troubadour of the Restoration, orator of the Republic, and honest 
pauper of the Empire. 

“Let us pass from fossils to men. Let us look at the most lively among 
them—those at least who pretend to be so—to stand by principle, to unfurl their 
colors—Legitimists, Orleanists and Liberals. Another cemetery this. But there is 
something audible there. What? A sigh, a whine, an allusion. So far goes their 
breath. No farther. They pant, they weep; tears make no noise. It is but the revolt 
of silence, the audacity of sadness, and the courage of regrets. The Constitution is 
regretted; so is the Charter,28 so Henry V, everybody and everything, down to the 
Duchesses,4 whom they themselves had bid to be gone. Béranger is embalmed; 
Voltaire revived from the death.... Béranger went to prison; Voltaire into exile. 
Their weepers go to church. To die for the ungrateful, say the brave Débats, is to 
die in vain, and they prefer living at any price.... We will not die, says the Siecle, 
save for moderation’s sake. Who is wise in his generation will accept facts 
accomplished, and content himself with selling in the streets.... The very Brutuses 
among them will take to mongering opposition against Veuillot.29 Yes, in the midst 
of this Nineteenth century, after three revolutions made in the name of the 
sovereignty of the people and of reason, 66 years after the revolution of 
September, 28 years after that of July, 10 years after that of February, in 1858, in 
France, they are discussing.... What? Miracles.... Oh, Lamennais, model of courage 
and honor, passionate lover of justice, who, the day after the battle of June, 1848, 
preferred breaking his pen rather than having it cut to the measure of the sword; 
who protested against the rich victor by the courageous cry, ‘Silence for the 
poor’ 3°; who made his very age protest from the prison, and his death itself from 
the common ditch,?! thou wast but a coward and a fool! It is wisdom to write in 
order to say nothing; it is courage to speak in order to lie and betray, to keep 
peace with the regime of warnings, to conform to the diet prescribed by Doctor 
Fialin, to drink oil and treacle in the leading articles, and feed upon the legislative 

debates of Piedmont and Belgium.32 All that time over, December will continue to 
dispose of the life, the rights, the future of France. Late representatives of the 
people, journalists, the best citizens, all that remains of the revolution, will be 
transported from the dungeons of Belle Isle?3 to those of Corsica, on the 
expiration of their punishment to be shipped off further still, to the burning sands 
of Cayenne,*4 as was done with Delescluze ... and such information even will have 
to be smuggled to France in the bottoms of the English press. Shame unheard of, 
even in Pagan Rome, even among the fanatics of Jiddah 35! A woman married and 
separated from her husband, arrives a stranger at Paris, is arrested and conducted 
to the guard-house; and now hark what the soldiers of December set about doing. 
We quote the official act of accusation. The Sergeant of the guard takes her up in 
the ward and vainly annoys her with his filthy importunities. Then he orders two 
of his chasseurs to enter the ward, and be more fortunate. The woman still resists 
the two. The Sergeant has her stretched in the barrack-room itself, on a bench, 
with a sack for her cushion. Then the candle is put out, and all the men, nine in 
number, the Sergeant and the Corporal at their head, ravish that woman, keeping 
her by the arms and by the legs, while she screams, ‘My God, leave me, leave me!’ 
The Sergeant, who gives the orders, as he sets the example, says: “Take numerals 
each from the right to the left, everybody must pass in his turn.’... Then, 
afterward, two quarts of brandy are drunk at the expense of the victim. And those 
defenders of order, those saviours wearing medals, the prime of the nation, those 
chasseurs of Vincennes who made December, and who do now the work of 
violation by the number, platoon violation, they are committed to prison for six 
days, and to the payment of 16 francs damages. The violators are inviolable, and 
the journal that enregisters the fact is authorized to state that there are ‘attenuating 
circumstances.’ Long life to the Empereur! In truth, The Times is right; every man 
of sense and feeling must wish the total abolition of the French press, rather than 
see it the accomplice of such crimes. A lamp without flame, why should it smoke? 
Why deceive, why trouble opinion any more? Enough of lies, under the semblance 
of truth; enough of prostitution, with the airs of prudery; enough of cowardice, 
under the name of constancy; enough of corruption, under the mask of life. 
Hypocritic, histrionic mummies, do not longer counterfeit life, get yourselves 
buried, ... and, to think that these are still the best, those press men who, at least, 
plume themselves upon being partisans, one way or the other!... But what of the 
remainder? There are, first, the neutrals, insensible to collective life, withdrawn to 
the background of cool grottoes, there to coquet with art for art’s sake, or with 
philosophy for philosophy’s sake, a sort of hermits in ecstasy at a rhyme or a 
diagram, fops believing in form only, pedants sticking to abstraction, excusing their 
indifference by the worthlessness of the vulgar, yet allowing the imperial eagle to 
convey them little cakes and little crosses, suiciding themselves in their works as the 
insect does in its cocoon, caterpillars of vanity, chrysalids of egotism, with no heart 
in them, dying of self-love like Narcissus. Then there comes another gang who 
once did in revolutions, but now do in jobs.... Happy results of the empire of 
peace 36.... Once they served principles, now they serve the funds; once the parties, 
now the bankers; once they called themselves monarchy or republic, now they go 
by the name of the North Western or Great Eastern, subjects of the branch Mires 
or the house Millaud, legitimists in the pay of these Jewish dynasties, Levites3” of 
the idols of the Bourse singing the scala of the Rentes and preaching the rights of 
the premium in the temple of the merchants, the tail of St. Simonism heading the 
choir before the altar of the golden calf again become god, and before the throne 
of the blackleg@ transformed into Caesar.... Fie! We smell the last ranks of the 

literary world, official putrefaction, corpses in livery, gallooned skeletons, Pays, 
Patrie, Moniteur, Constitutionnel, the domestic pest dancing in a ring on the 
dung-yard of Augias.” 

In the second part of his “letter to the Mandarins,” Mr. Pyat 
contrasts the active devotion of the French press at the times of 
the Restoration and Louis Philippe to its present total abdication. 
Under the regime of the octroyed charter, 

“all did their duty, from the most illustrious to the most obscure. From 
Béranger to Fantau, from Magalon to Courier, Tay, Touy, Bert, Canchois, 
Chatelain, all went to the prison; some to St. Pélagie, some to Poissy. In the same 
way, under ‘the best of Republics, Lamennais got incarcerated, Raspail, Carrel, 
Marrast, Dupoty, Esquiros, Thoré—all the Republicans. Armand Carrel then, to 
his eternal honor, resisted force by force, covering his journal by his sword, and 
making Périer recoil before this memorable challenge: ‘It is little, the life of a man 
killed furtively in the corner of a street; but it is much, the life of a man of honor 
who should be massacred in his own house by the sbirri? of M. Périer, while 
resisting in the name of right. His blood would cry for vengeance. Every writer, 
penetrated by his own dignity, should oppose law to illegality, and force to force. 
Such is my duty, happen what may.’»... However, if, since December, all ‘the 
Mandarins’ of France have withdrawn from the battlefield, the working class, and 
even the peasantry, have become the focus of political life. They alone bear the 
brunt of criminal persecutions, get up the conspiracies, take the offensive— 
unknown, anonymous, mere plebs as they are.... With them originated the affair of 
_ the Hippodrome, and the attempts at insurrection that ran from Paris to Lyons, 
from St. Etienne to Bordeaux. At Angers, it was the carriers, at Chalon, it was the 
coopers—simple working men, who had acted on their own account, without any 
leaders from the upper classes.” 39 

As to the conspiracy of Chalon, Mr. Pyat gives some details 
hitherto unknown, with which we shall conclude these extracts. 
The chief of that conspiracy was a working man (cooper), 
thirty-two years of age, called Agénais. Mr. Lievre, the public 
accuser, describes him thus to the Tribunal: 

““This man is a working man, industrious, orderly, instructed, disinterested; 
consequently the more dangerous—the more worth attracting the eye of the police 
and the hand of justice. He had declared he would not bear that an Italian should 
have the honor of saving France.’ In order to convince the Judges that that man 
ought to be put down the type of ‘an enemy of family, religion and property,’ Mr. 
Liévre read the following letter, addressed from Algeria by Agénais to his mother, 
and intercepted by the Decembrist police: ‘My African jailors, knowing my position 
with my family, have often placed myself between these alternatives—heart and 
head, feeling and duty. These trials were especially renewed whenever I received a 
letter from you, the effects of which they spied with lynx eyes. This lasted a long 
time. Finally, at the end of their tricks and tired of the struggle, a superior jailor, a 

b Le National, January 24, 1832.— Ed. 

high officer, came one evening to visit me in my cell, and after some words 
exchanged with me, ended by saying, “You will not bend, you shall be broken.” “I 
may be broken,” was my answer, “but I shall not bend.” Some days later, I 
received communication of an order sending me to Cayenne. I had twelve hours to 
reflect. I turned them to advantage. Hence I have neither bent, nor was I broken. 
Man proposes and God disposes, always the old proverb. Congratulate you, 
therefore, upon having seen myself resist the allurements of your wishes, and 
having followed the inspirations of my conscience alone. That faithful counselor 
has often repeated to me that I live only by the heart and for duty, and that 
without them nothing would remain of me but a coarse envelope, and I feel every 
day more distinctly that this interior voice is that of the truth.... Such is my excuse 
with respect to my family.’ 

“An Imperial Procureur,’ 
that.” 

’ 

remarks M. Pyat, “would certainly not have invented 

Agénais, unwilling either to bend or to break, escapes from the 
bagno of Algiers in order to avoid that of Cayenne, gains by 
swimming to a ship and returns to Spain, thence to France, where 
he again repairs to Chalon, a faithful soldier of the Marianne, 
an obstinate champion of the Republic.