"
"As a nation, you have too much mental activity to allow any
government to run its course without interference. But for that, you
would make the conquest of Europe a second time, and win with the pen
all that you failed to keep with the sword."
"Journalism is an evil," said Claude Vignon. "The evil may have its
uses, but the present Government is resolved to put it down. There
will be a battle over it. Who will give way? That is the question."
"The Government will give way," said Blondet. "I keep telling people
that with all my might! Intellectual power is _the_ great power in
France; and the press has more wit than all men of intellect put
together, and the hypocrisy of Tartufe besides."
"Blondet! Blondet! you are going too far!" called Finot. "Subscribers
are present."
"You are the proprietor of one of those poison shops; you have reason
to be afraid; but I can laugh at the whole business, even if I live by
it."
"Blondet is right," said Claude Vignon. "Journalism, so far from being
in the hands of a priesthood, came to be first a party weapon, and
then a commercial speculation, carried on without conscience or
scruple, like other commercial speculations. Every newspaper, as
Blondet says, is a shop to which people come for opinions of the right
shade. If there were a paper for hunchbacks, it would set forth
plainly, morning and evening, in its columns, the beauty, the utility,
and necessity of deformity.
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