the end of a stick, which represents the sacred emblem of the country, passes by, a wave of religious emotion passes over the throng of patriots, and they devoutly bare their heads, just as their great-grandfathers bared their heads before the Holy Sacrament.
Ah! I know that I am hurting your feelings, gentlemen of the jury, and that you feel all the more hurt because you know that I am saying what is true. I know that I am wounding the "universal conscience," of which the Paris Bar has made itself such an eloquent interpreter. But do you think that Voltaire, Diderot, and the other encyclopædists hurt nobody's feelings? It is a lamentable fact that whenever a nascent society is emerging from the womb of the old order, it is always with prolonged and agonizing birth-pangs, causing, to the adherents of the ancient system, distress and anguish which the innovators would fain have spared them.
As for us, the revolutionary socialists, we have repudiated the flag on which are displayed in letters of gold the names of so many butcheries.
WHAT IS A COUNTRY?
Flags are only emblems; they have no value beyond what they represent. What, then, do we mean by a country or a nation? What are all the countries of today?
Allow me, gentlemen of the jury, to make use of an illustration, a sort of parable, which will enable you better of to understand our sentiments.
Countries—all countries or nations, whatever may be the governmental ticket with which they are labeled—are composed of two groups of men, one by far the less numerous, the other embracing the immense majority of the people.
The first group is seated at a well-spread table, where nothing is lacking. At the head of the table, at the place of honor, are seated the great financiers. Some are Jews, yes; others are Catholics; others, again, are Protestants or Freethinkers. They may be in disagreement on religious or philosophic questions, and even on questions of
