From the Other Shore

I was accused of preaching despair, of not knowing the people, of dépit amoureux a lovers' quarrel or spite against the revolution, and of a lack of respect for democracy, for the masses, for Europe...

The Second of December refers to the 1851 coup d'état by Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte answered them louder than I could.

In 1852, I met in London with my most witty opponent, Solger. He was packing his bags to hurry off to America, as it seemed to him there was nothing to be done in Europe. "Circumstances," I remarked to him, "seem to have convinced you that I was not entirely wrong?" "I did not need that much," Solger replied with a good-natured laugh, "to guess that I was writing great nonsense at the time."

Despite this charming confession, the general conclusion of these judgments, the remaining impression, was rather against me. Does this feeling of irritability not express the closeness of danger, the fear of the future, the desire to hide one's own weakness, a capricious, petrified senility?

... A strange fate for Russians: to see further than their neighbors, to see more gloomily, and to boldly express their opinion—Russians, those "mutes," as Michelet said.

Here is what one of our countrymen wrote, long before me:

"Who praised more than we did the advantage of the XVIII century, the light of philosophy, the softening of manners, the universal spread of the spirit