IX. Agency

• • Introduction and preface
  • I. The Brimstone Gang
  • II. The Bristlers
  • III. Police Matters
  • IV. Techow's Letter
  • V. Imperial Regent and Count Palatine
  • VI. Vogt and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
  • VII. The Augsburg Campaign
  • VIII. Dâ-Dâ Vogt and his Studies "Sine Studio"
  • IX. Agency
  • X. Patrons and Accomplices
  • XI. A Lawsuit
  • XII. Appendices

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IX. Agency

"So muosens alle strîten.

in vîl angestlîchen zîtenwart gescheiden doch her dan

... der Vogt da von Bërne."(Klage)

In a Programme which Dâ-Dâ Vogt in a fit of great hilarity has dated April 1, namely April 1, 1859, he called upon democrats of every shade of opinion to collaborate in a paper which was to appear in Geneva and propagate the Decembrist-Russian views of his Studien. Circumspect as the Programme naturally had to be, the cloven hoof can occasionally be glimpsed beneath the blotting-paper in which it is wrapped. But we shall not dwell on this aspect of it.

At the conclusion of his Programme Vogt asks his readers to give him the names of "like-minded comrades" who "would be prepared to support similar aims in newspapers and journals to which they had access". At the Joint Festival in Lausanne he declared he had formulated a Programme with an invitation to

"those people who were in agreement with it and were prepared to work for it, in exchange for an appropriate remuneration, in organs of the press at their disposal" (Centralfest, etc., p. 17).

Lastly, in a letter to Dr. Loening he writes:

"Can you put me in touch with people who could influence newspapers and journals in this sense from Frankfurt? I am in a position to offer respectable remuneration for the contributions offprints of which I am sent" ("Magnum Opus", Documents, p. 36).

The "like-minded comrades" of the Programme become "those people who" at the Joint Festival of Lausanne, and they in turn are transformed into "people", people sans phrase, in the letter to Dr. Loening. Vogt the Treasurer in Chief and Inspector General of the German press has had "funds placed at his disposal" (loc. cit., p. 36) with which to commission not only articles "in newspapers and journals", but even "pamphlets" (loc. cit.). It is easy to see that an agency on this scale stands in need of quite substantial "funds"

"—er sante nach allen den hêrren

die in diusken rîchen wâren;

er klagete in allen sîn nôt,

unde bôt in ouch sîn golt rôt."

(Kaiserchronik).

But to what purpose were newspapers, journals and pamphlets to be "influenced" and "sent to" Vogt by those people who would then receive "respectable" remuneration from him? "It is Italy that is at stake", that is all; for in order to ward off the danger threatening on the Rhine it "appears advantageous" to Herr Vogt "to bleed Louis Bonaparte in Italy" (Programme, loc. cit., p. 34). No, "it is not Italy that is at stake" (letter to Dr. Loening, loc. cit., p. 36). "Hungary is at stake" (letter to Herr H. in N., loc. cit.). No, Hungary is not at stake. "What is at stake ... is something that I cannot disclose'' (loc. cit., Documents, p. 36).

As controversial as the question of what is at stake is the problem of the source from which these respectable "funds" flow. It lies in "a remote corner of French Switzerland" ("Magnum Opus", p. 210). No, "it is Hungarian ladies from the West" (letter to Karl Blind, supplement to No. 44 of the Allgemeine Zeitung of February 13, 1860). On the contrary, it is some masculini "within the reach of the German and especially the Austrian police" (Centralfest, p. 17). The size of his funds is no less chameleon-like than their purpose and source. They amount to "a few francs" ("Magnum Opus", p. 210). "The funds are small" (Centralfest, p. 17). The funds are adequate to provide respectable remuneration for all those able to exert a Vogtian influence in the German press and in pamphlets. To cap it all there are even two accounts of the formation of the funds. Vogt has "scraped them together slowly and painfully" ("Magnum Opus", p. 210). No, they "have been placed at his disposal" (loc. cit., Documents, p. 36).

"If I am not mistaken," says the "well-rounded character", "to bribe means to offer someone money or other advantages to perform actions or make utterances contrary to his own convictions" (loc. cit., p. 217).

Hence anyone whose convictions bid him to allow himself to be bought cannot be bribed, likewise anyone whose convictions run counter to this cannot be bribed. For example, if the department of the Paris Ministry responsible for the foreign press offers Swiss newspapers copies of the Paris Lithographierte Correspondenz which appears daily and costs 250 francs, at half or a quarter of the price, or even for nothing, and if it intimates to "editors who are well disposed" that they can expect a cash bonus of 50, 100 or 150 francs each month "depending on their success", this cannot be called bribery by any stretch of the imagination. The editors whose convictions run counter to the daily Correspondenz and the monthly bonus are not compelled to accept the one or the other. And has Granier de Cassagnac been "bribed", or La Guéronnière, or About, or Grandguillot, or Bullier, or Jourdan of Le Siècle, or Martin or Boniface of Le Constitutionnel, or Rochaid Dâ-Dâ Albert? Has a remunerative action or utterance ever come into conflict with the convictions of any of these gentlemen? Or again, did Vogt bribe the agent of a certain Swiss newspaper formerly hostile to him when he placed several hundred copies of his Studien at his disposal free of charge? In any event it is a strange invitation, Vogt's invitation to journalists to work in the spirit of their own convictions in organs at their disposal and to be rewarded for their efforts by the organ of Herr Karl Vogt in Geneva. The fact that Vogt makes no distinction between the fee paid by a particular newspaper to its own contributors and the secret subsidies which a third party draws from an anonymous source and offers to the correspondents of newspapers quite unconnected with him and even to the press of a whole nation—this quid pro quo shows the extent to which the German Dâ-Dâ "familiarised" himself with the morality of December 2.

"At the source there sat a youth." But at which source?

Instead of the weekly Die Neue Schweiz intended by Vogt, there appeared somewhat later in Geneva the Neue Schweizer Zeitung, founded by Herr A. Brass, Dâ-Dâ's friend of many years' standing. One cool morning in November Herr Brass declared to the astonishment of the whole of Geneva that he had

"written to Vogt spurning the French feeding-trough that Vogt had tried to set before him".

At the same time he declared his willingness to stand by his denunciation before a court (Neue Schweizer Zeitung, November 12, 1859). And the cock or rather the capon that had crowed so merrily until that moment suddenly fell silent as soon as he was attacked on his own dung-heap. The "New Swiss, citizen of the Canton of Berne and member of the Council of States for Geneva" now stood publicly accused in the middle of Geneva by one of his "notorious" friends of having attempted to bribe him with French money. And the Genevan Councillor fell silent.

It should not be imagined that Vogt could simply ignore the Neue Schweizer Zeitung with an air of superiority. The denunciation of his actions had appeared, as we have said, in the issue of November 12, 1859. Shortly after this the same paper published a piquant description of Plon-Plon and the Revue de Genève, the organ of James Fazy, the dictator of Geneva, immediately retorted in a four-column leading article (Revue de Genève, December 6, 1859). It protested "au nom du radicalisme genèvois", in the name of Genevan radicalism. Such was the importance attached to the Neue Schweizer Zeitung by James Fazy himself. The four-column leading article of the Revue de Genève shows the unmistakable signs of Vogt's helping hand. Brass himself is half-excused. He had not contrived the attack on Plon-Plon, but had merely been led astray. In the authentic Vogtian style the corpus delicti is placed at the doorstep of the same L. Häfner whom Vogt suspected, in the "Magnum Opus" too (p. 188), of spreading "unsavoury pieces of personal gossip about the Emperor and Prince Napoleon". There is also Vogt's inevitable allusion to "the notorious former Baden lieutenant Clossmann" as the Berne correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung (cf. "Magnum Opus", p. 198). Let us dwell for a moment on the protest which master and servant, James Fazy and Karl Vogt, published on December 6, 1859 in the Revue de Genève "in the name of Genevan radicalism" and in vindication of Plon-Plon.

Brass is accused of attempting "to validate his German opinion of France by insulting a Prince of the House of Bonaparte". As had long been common knowledge in Geneva, Plon-Plon was a liberal of the purest water who during his exile had magnanimously refused "to play a part of any sort at the court of Stuttgart or even Petersburg". Nothing would be more ridiculous than to impute to him, as does the libellous article in the Neue Schweizer Zeitung, the idea of forming a small sovereign realm here and there, an Etruscan kingdom, for instance.

"Prince Napoleon, who is acutely aware of his own genius and his own talents, has too lofty an opinion of himself to stoop to such petty thrones."

Rather does he prefer "as citizen-prince" (prince-citoyen) to play the part of Marquis Posa at the court of his exalted cousin in France, "the centre of high civilisation and the fount of general inspiration". "His cousin loves and respects him, whatever people may say of this." The Prince is not only Bonaparte's Marquis Posa. He is "the disinterested friend" of Italy, of Switzerland, in short, of the subject nationalities.

"Prince Napoleon, like the Emperor, is a great economist.... Undoubtedly, if the sound principles of political economy ever triumph in France, this will be due in no small measure to the influence of Prince Napoleon."

He was and is "the advocate of the most far-reaching freedom of the press", the enemy of all preventive measures on the part of the police, the adherent of "ideas of freedom in the broadest sense of the word, both in theory and practice". If this Egeria finds that the Emperor's malicious entourage has made him deaf to his voice, he makes a dignified withdrawal, but "without sulking". It is simply "his merits that have exposed him to the slanders of Europe". The

"enemies of France fear him because he relies on the revolutionary support of the peoples of Europe to restore to them their nationhood and their liberty".

Hence he is a misunderstood genius, Marquis Posa, Egeria, an economist, the protector of the subject nationalities, a democrat of the purest water and—can it be possible?—Plon-Plon is "habile comme général et brave comme tout officier fançais" ("a skilful general and valiant like every French officer").

"He proved this in the Eastern campaign, during and following the battle on the Alma." And in the Italian campaign "he ably organised his army corps of 50,000 men" (the celebrated corps de touristes; I was almost tempted to write corps de ballet) "and within a short space of time he made a hard march through mountainous country without his men wanting for anything".

The French troops in the Crimea are known to have said of anyone who got into a funk that he was suffering from la maladie Plon-Plonienne, and it is likely that Plon-Plon only withdrew from the peninsula because of the increasing shortage of provisions.

"We," the Revue de Genève concludes triumphantly, "we have portrayed him", namely Plon-Plon, "as he really is".

Three cheers for General Plon-Plon!

No wonder therefore that Vogt can announce that he received his war chest from "democratic hands". Plon-Plon, the Prince Rouge, is the ideal of both Vogt and Fazy; he is, as it were, the enchanted prince of European democracy. Vogt could not receive his money from purer democratic hands than those of Plon-Plon. Even if some of the monies made over directly to Mr. Kossuth by Plon-Plon's exalted cousin had been transmitted to Vogt through Hungarian hands, their "origins would still be monstrous". But from the hands of Plon-Plon...! And even if the monies that Vogt obtained from Klapka's friend, Countess K., at the time of the Neuchâtel affair might come from more delicate hands, they could not possibly come from purer or more democratic ones. A well-known French writer has said that "Plon-Plon est voluptueux comme Héliogabale, lâche comme Ivan III et faux comme un vrai Bonaparte".Plon-Plon's most disastrous achievement is that he has turned his cousin into un homme sérieux. Victor Hugo could still say of Louis Bonaparte "nest pas monstre qui veut". But ever since Louis Bonaparte invented Plon-Plon, the business side of the Imperial Janus has been concentrated in the hands of the man in the Tuileries, and the grotesque side in the man residing in the Palais Royal. The false Bonaparte, who is his uncle's nephew without being his father's son, appeared authentic when compared with this authentic Bonaparte. So that the French still say: "l'autre est plus sûr". Plon-Plon is both the Don Quixote and the Hudibras of the bas empire. Hamlet thought it disquieting that the dust of Alexander might have been used to stop a bung-hole. What would Hamlet have said if he had seen the disintegrated head of Napoleon on the shoulders of Plon-Plon?

Although Vogt obtained the main supplies of money for his war chest "from the French feeding-trough", it is of course possible that to conceal this he also organised ostentatious collections of "a few francs" from more or less democratically inclined friends. The contradictions about the source, quantity and formation of his - funds are thus quite easily resolved.

Vogt's agency did not confine itself to the Studien, the Programm and the setting up of a recruitment office. At the "Joint Festival" in Lausanne he informed the German workers in Switzerland of Louis Bonaparte's mission to liberate the subject nationalities, and he did so of course in more radical terms than he had used in the Studien, which had been intended for the liberal German philistines. In the latter case his penetrating study of the relation between "matter and energy"had led him to the conclusion that there could be no question of "undermining and destroying the existing governments in Germany" (Studien, Preface, p. VII), and he appealed to the "German bourgeois" in particular (loc. cit., p. 128) "to take to heart" the consideration that the Bonapartist "liberation" of Italy. would help to ward off "revolution" in Germany. He informed the German workers, on the other hand, that "Austria is the only pillar shoring up their" (i.e. the German rulers') "existence" (Centralfest, etc., p. 11)..

"As I have just pointed out," he said, "Germany does not exist as far as the outside world is concerned, it has still to be created, and I am convinced that it can only be created in the form of a federation of republics similar to the Swiss Confederation" (loc. cit., p. 10).

He said this on June 26 (1859), while on June 6, in the Afterword to the second edition of the Studien he entreated the Prince Regent of Prussia to bring Germany beneath the sway of the House of Hohenzollern by force of arms and a dynastic civil war. Monarchic centralisation by force of arms is, of course, the shortest.. way to a federal republic "similar to the Swiss Confederation". He further developed the theory of the "external enemy", France, with which Germany should ally itself in opposition to the "internal enemy", Austria.

"If I am presented with the choice," he. exclaimed, "between the Devil (Habsburg) and his grandmother (Louis Bonaparte), I will choose the latter, since she is an old woman and must die."

This direct appeal to Germany to throw itself into the arms of Decembrist France on the pretext of hatred for Austria seemed to him too compromising to be put into print, so in the published speech we find this emended version:

"And if we are obliged to take up sides in the dispute between the Devil and his grandmother we think it would be best if the two were to kill and devour each other, thus saving us the trouble" (Centralfest, etc., p. 13).

Finally, whereas in the Studien he raises the standard of Louis Bonaparte as the Emperor of the peasants and soldiers, when faced with an audience of workers he declares that

"it is especially the great majority of workers in Paris who have been won over to Louis Bonaparte".

In the view of the French workers

"Louis Bonaparte is doing everything the Republic should have done since he is giving work to the proletariat and ruining the bourgeoisie, etc." (Centralfest, etc., p. 9).

Thus Louis Bonaparte is a workers' dictator and eulogised as such before the German workers in Switzerland by the very same Vogt who in the "Magnum Opus" flared up in bourgeois indignation at the mere mention of the words "workers' dictatorship"!

The Paris programme which laid down the line to be followed by the Decembrist agents in Switzerland on the question of the annexation of Savoy consisted of three points: (1) For as long as possible rumours of the imminent danger were to be completely ignored and if necessary they were to be dismissed as an Austrian invention. (2) At a more advanced stage it should be put about that Louis Bonaparte wished to incorporate the neutralised territory into Switzerland. (3) And finally, once the annexation had been carried out it should be used as a justification for a Swiss alliance with France, i.e. for Switzerland's voluntary submission to a Bonapartist protectorate. We shall now see how faithfully master and servant, James Fazy and Karl Vogt, the dictator of Geneva and the member of the Council of States for Geneva created by him, adhered to the terms of this programme.

We have already seen in the Studien that Vogt assiduously avoided all mention of the idea on behalf of which his man of destiny was embarking on war. The same silence prevails at the Joint Festival in Lausanne, in the National Council, at the celebrations in memory of Schiller and Robert Blum, in the Biel Commis voyageur and, lastly, in the "Magnum Opus". And yet the "idea" was even older than the conspiracy of Plombières. As early as December 1851, a few days after the coup d'état, one could read in Le Patriote savoisien.

"The official positions in Savoy are already being shared out in the antechambers of the Elysée. Its newspapers find the subject a great source of amusement."

On December 6, 1851 M. Fazy considered Geneva as good as lost to the December Empire.

On July 1, 1859 Stämpfli, who was President of the Confederation at the time, had an interview with Captain Harris, the British chargé d'affaires in Berne. He repeated his fears that in the event of the expansion of Sardinian rule in Italy, the annexation of Sayoy by France was a settled matter, and he emphasised that the annexation of North Savoy in particular would completely expose one flank of Switzerland and this would entail the loss of Geneva in the near future (see the first Blue Book On the Proposed Annexation of Savoy and Nice, No. I). Harris reported to Malmesbury, who for his part instructed Lord Cowley in Paris to ask Walewski to explain the nature of the Emperor's intentions. Walewski in no way denied that

"France and Sardinia had more than once discussed the problem of annexation and that the Emperor entertained the idea that if Sardinia was to be enlarged and become an Italian Kingdom, it was not unreasonable to expect that she should, on the other hand, make territorial concessions to France" (loc. cit., No. IV).

Walewski's reply was written on July 4, 1859 and hence pre-dated the peace of Villafranca. In August 1859 Petétin's pamphlet appeared in Paris, preparing Europe for the annexation of Savoy. That same August, after the summer session of the Swiss National Assembly, Herr Vogt slunk into Paris to receive his instructions from Plon-Plon. To put people off the scent he arranged for his fellow-scoundrels, Ranickel and Co., to spread the rumour in Geneva that he had gone for a cure on the Lake of Lucerne.

"ze Pârîs lëbt er mangen tac,

vil kleiner wîsheit er enpflac,

sîn zerung was unmâzen grôz;...

ist ër ein esel und ein gouch,

daz sëlb ist ër zuo Pârîs ouch."

In September 1859 the Swiss Federal Council saw the threat of annexation looming nearer (loc. cit., No. VI) and on November 12 it resolved to address a memorandum to this effect to the great powers. On November 18 President Stämpfli and Chancellor Schiess handed an official note to the English chargé d'affaires in Berne (loc. cit., No. IX). James Fazy, who had returned in October from his abortive journey to Tuscany where he had vainly striven to advance the cause of Plon-Plon's Etruscan kingdom, now tried to stem the rumours of annexation in his usual loud and cantankerous manner and with an affectation of rage: no one has ever dreamt of annexation, either in France or in Sardinia. As the danger drew nearer, the confidence of the Revue de Genève increased accordingly and in November and December 1859 its Corybantic cult of the Napoleonides surpassed all bounds (see, for example, the article on Plon-Plon quoted above).

With the year 1860 we enter the second phase of the annexation affair.

Issuing denials or just turning a deaf ear was no longer in the interest of the Decembrists. The problem now rather was to make Switzerland more amenable to the idea of annexation and manoeuvre it into a false position. The second point of the Tuileries programme had to be put into action, i.e. the alleged intention of donating the neutral territory to Switzerland had to be publicised as loudly as possible. These efforts of the Swiss Decembrists were of course supported by simultaneous man-oeuvres in Paris. Thus Baroche, the Minister of the Interior, told the Swiss Ambassador, Dr. Kern, at the beginning of January 1860, that

"should any change in the ownership of Savoy occur hereafter it should only be made with due regard to those provisions of the Treaties of 1815 which stipulated that a portion of it sufficient to ensure a good line of defence should be at the same time ceded to Switzerland" (see the Blue Book, op. cit., No. XIII).

And even on February 2, 1860, on the same day that Thouvenel told the British Ambassador, Lord Cowley, that the annexation of Savoy and Nice was a "possibility", he informed him at the same time that

"indeed, in the opinion of the French Government, it would be well if in these circumstances the districts of Chablais and Faucigny should be united permanently to Switzerland" (loc. cit., No. XXVII).

The dissemination of this illusion was designed not only to make the Swiss more amenable to the idea of the annexation of Savoy by the December Empire, but also to blunt their subsequent protest, and to compromise them in the eyes of Europe by making them the accomplices, albeit the cheated accomplices, of the Decembrists. Frey-Hérosé, President of the Confederation since 1860, avoided the pitfall and even informed Captain Harris of his misgivings about the supposed advantages of incorporating the neutralised territory into Switzerland. For his part, Harris warned the Federal Government about the Bonapartist intrigue, so that

"Switzerland should not appear .as a Power eager for annexation or extension of territory" (loc. cit., No. XV).

On the other hand, Sir James Hudson, the British Ambassador in Turin, wrote to Lord John Russell after a lengthy interview with Cavour:

"I have good ground for believing that Switzerland also is anxious to annex to herself a portion of Savoy. Consequently, it ought to be clearly understood, that when France is blamed for seeking this cession, Switzerland is no less to blame.... This question therefore, becoming more complicated by this double attack, renders the position of Sardinia more defensible" (loc. cit., No. XXXIV).

Finally, as soon as Louis Bonaparte threw away the mask, Thouvenel quite unceremoniously revealed the mystery behind the slogan of the Swiss annexation of the neutral territory. In a dispatch to the French chargé d'affaires in Berne he openly derided the Swiss protest against the French annexation of Savoy, and how? By using the "plan for the partition of Savoy" foisted on Switzerland by Paris (see Thouvenel's dispatch of March 17, 1860).

And what did the Swiss agents of December meanwhile contribute to the web of delusion? In January 1860, in the course of discussion with the British chargé d'affaires in Berne, James Fazy was the first to represent the annexation of Chablais and Faucigny to Switzerland not as something promised by Louis Bonaparte, but as the desire of Switzerland and of the inhabitants of the neutralised districts (loc. cit., No. XXIII). Vogt, who until that moment had never dreamt of the possibility of a French annexation of Savoy, was suddenly inspired by the spirit of prophecy, and The Times, which had never mentioned the name Vogt since its inception, suddenly announced in a correspondence dated January 30:

"The Swiss Professor Vogt pretends to know that France will procure for Switzerland Faucigny, Chablais, and the Genevese, the neutral provinces of Savoy, if the Grand Council of the Republic will let her have the free use of the Simplon" (The Times, February 3, 1860).

Even more! At the end of January 1860 James Fazy assured the British chargé d'affaires in Berne that Cavour, with whom he had had a long interview in Geneva hardly two months previously, was foaming with rage at the idea of making any concession to France (see the Blue Book, op. cit., No. XXXIII). Thus while Fazy plays guarantor for Cavour to England, Cavour exculpates himself in English eyes by revealing the territorial ambitions of the same Fazy (loc. cit., No. XXXIII). And finally, Tourte, the Swiss Ambassador in Turin, hastens to the British Ambassador, Hudson, as late as February 9, 1860 to assure him that

"no engagement subsists between Sardinia and France for the cession of Savoy to France, and that Sardinia is not in the least disposed to cede or exchange Savoy to France" (loc. cit.).

The decisive moment was drawing nearer. The Paris Patrie of January 25, 1860 began to prepare the way for the annexation of Savoy in an article entitled "Les voeux de la Savoie". In another article, on January 27, "Le comté de Nice", it foreshadowed in its Decembrist style the annexation of Nice. On February 2, 1860 Thouvenel announced to the British Ambassador, Cowley, that even before the war France and Sardinia had agreed that the annexation of Savoy and Nice was a "possibility". However, an official note on France's actual decision to absorb Savoy and Nice was not given to Lord Cowley until February 5 (see Lord Cowley's speech in the House of Lords on April 23, 1860) and Dr. Kern was not told until February 6. And both the British and Swiss Ambassadors were explicitly informed that the neutralised territory was to be absorbed into Switzerland. Prior to these official announcements, James Fazy was instructed from the Tuileries that Sardinia had already ceded Savoy and Nice to France in a secret treaty and that the treaty contained no clause in favour of Switzerland. Prior to Thouvenel's official announcements to Lord Cowley and Dr. Kern, Fazy was to sugar the Imperial pill and present it to his Genevan subjects. On February 3, therefore, he arranged for his blindly devoted tool, John Perrier, to organise a popular meeting on the premises of the Club populaire of Geneva, a meeting which he attended apparently by chance, on the pretext that

"he had just heard (je viens d'entendre) that the treaties were being discussed which may have been concluded between France and Sardinia for the cession of Savoy. Unfortunately, such a treaty was signed on January 27 by the Sardinian Government; but from this positive fact we cannot yet deduce that our security is really threatened.... It is true that there is no written reservation made in the treaty in favour of our rights over the Sardinian neutralised territory; but we do not know whether in the intention of the contracting parties there may not exist some reservation in this sense.... It may have been taken into consideration, and, so to speak, understood as taken for granted (sous-entendu comme allant de soi)....Weshould beware of introducing any spirit of premature distrust.... We should rely on the sympathy" (for the coup d'état monarchy) "...and abstain from any hostile word."

(See Fazy's "confidential" speech, in its own way a masterpiece of demagogy, in the Revue de Genève of February 3, 1860.) The British chargé d'affaires in Berne found Fazy's prophetic knowledge remarkable enough for him to send a special dispatch to Lord John Russell about it.

The official treaty relating to the cession of Savoy and Nice to France was due to be concluded on March 24, 1860. So there was no time to be lost. The Swiss patriotism of the Genevan Decembrists had to be officially established before the official proclamation of the annexation of Savoy. Signor Vogt therefore journeyed to Paris early in March, accompanied by General Klapka, who might well be acting de bonne foi, with the intention of bringing his influence to bear on Plon-Plon, the Egeria of the Palais Royal, the misunderstood genius, and, in full view of the whole of Switzerland, of throwing his personal weight into the scales in favour of the incorporation of the neutralised territory into Switzerland. From the Lucullan table of Plon-Plon—in the art of gastronomy, as is well known, Plon-Plon rivals both Lucullus and Cambacérès, so that if Brillat-Savarin were to rise from the grave, even he would marvel at Plon-Plon's genius, economics, liberal ideas, military talent and personal valour in this field—from the Lucullan table of Plon-Plon, where as an "agreeable companion" he tucked in heartily, Falstaff-Vogt called on the Swiss to show their valour (see his long letter from Paris in the supplement to the Biel Commis voyageur of March 8, 1860). Switzerland should prove that

"its militia was not there just to parade and play at being soldiers". The "cession of the neutralised territory to Switzerland" was an illusion. "The abandonment of Chablais and Faucigny to France was a first step, to be followed by others." "Mounted on the two stilts: nationality and natural frontiers, one can advance from the Lake of Geneva to the Aar and right up to Lake Constance and the Rhine—if one's legs are strong enough."

But—and this is the point—Falstaff-Vogt still does not give credence to what the French Minister Thouvenel himself had officially revealed a month before and what all Europe knew by now—that the cession of Savoy and Nice had been agreed on as long ago as August 1858 in Plombières, as the price of French intervention against Austria. His "man of destiny" had only just been driven against his will into the arms of chauvinism by the priests and coerced into confiscating the neutralised territory.

"Evidently," our embarrassed apologist stammers, "evidently the leading circles have been looking for a counterweight to the steady growth of the clerical movement and hope that this might be found in so-called chauvinism—in that most narrow-minded sense of nationality that knows of nothing beyond the acquisition of a bit (!) of territory."

After Vogt, intoxicated by the smells issuing from Plon-Plon's kitchen, had laid about him so heartily in the Biel Commis voyageur, he romanced wildly in the same mouthpiece on his return from Paris about the absolute love of the French to be found among the inhabitants of Nice. He thus came into a disagreeable conflict with Vegezzi-Ruscalla, one of the chief leaders of the Italian National Association and the author of the pamphlet La nazionalità di Nizza. And when the same hero who had played Winkelried from the safety of Plon-Plon's table came to speak in the National Council in Berne, the warlike clarion call turned into a diplomatic piping on the flute, which recommended calmly to carry on the . negotiations with the Emperor who had always been amicably disposed towards the Swiss and which warned emphatically against any alliance with the East. The President of the. Confederation, Frey-Hérosé, made some strange insinuations regarding Vogt, who on the other hand had the satisfaction of seeing his speech praised by the Nouvelliste Vaudois. The Nouvelliste Vaudois is the organ of Messrs. Blanchenay, Delarageaz and other Vaudois magnates, in short of the Swiss Western railway, just as the Neue Zürcher-Zeitung is the organ of Zurich Bonapartism and the Northeastern railway. To characterise the patrons of the Nouvelliste Vaudois it is enough to point out that on the occasion of the well-known dispute about the Oron railway five Vaudois government councillors were repeatedly and with impunity accused by the opposition press of having each received a present of 20 shares to the value of 10,000 francs from the Paris Crédit Mobilier, the chief shareholder of the Swiss Western railway.

A few days after Vogt had set off in the company of Klapka to visit the Egeria of the Palais Royal, James Fazy, accompanied by John Perrier, embarked on a journey to the sphinx in the Tuileries. It is known that Louis Bonaparte relishes the role of sphinx and maintains his Oedipuses just as former kings of France maintained their own court jesters. In the Tuileries, Fazy interposed himself between Switzerland and the sphinx. As we have said, John Perrier was his companion. This John is the very shadow of his James, he does everything the latter desires, nothing which he does not desire, lives through him and for him, became a member of the Grand Council of Geneva through him, prepares all festivals and toasts for him and acts, in short, as his Leporello and his , Fialin. Both returned to Geneva having achieved nothing as far as the threat to Switzerland was concerned, and with astonishing success, as far as the threat to Fazy's own position was concerned. Fazy thundered in public, saying that the scales had now fallen froth his eyes and that in future he would hate Louis Bonaparte as passionately as he had loved him hitherto. A strange love, this nine-year-long passion of the republican Fazy for the murderer of two republics! Fazy acted the disillusioned patriot with such virtuosity that the whole of Geneva wallowed in Fazy-enthusiasm and the demise of Fazy's illusions was felt almost more keenly than the loss of the neutralised provinces. Even Theodore de Saussure, the head of the aristocratic opposition and his enemy of many years' standing, confessed that it was no longer possible to doubt the sincerity of James Fazy's Swiss patriotism.

Having been the recipient of such well-merited popular ovations, the tyrant of Geneva hastened to the National Council in Berne. Shortly after his departure, his loyal squire, his Paris travelling companion, in short, his own John Perrier, embarked on a voyage of the Argonauts of a very special sort. A band of Swiss drunkards (at least this is how they were described in the columns of the London Times), chosen from the company of "fruitiers", Fazy's democratic bodyguard, set sail unarmed under Perrier's leadership for Thonon at which spot of the neutralised territory they intended to stage an anti-French demonstration. To this day no one can say in what this demonstration consisted or was supposed to consist, whether the Argonauts intended to search for the Golden Pelt or to sell their own skins. For no Orpheus accompanied Perrier's Argonauts and no Apollonius has sung of their deeds. It seems to have involved a sort of symbolic occupation of the neutralised territory by a Switzerland rep-resented by John Perrier and his band. The real Switzerland now found its hands so full with diplomatic excuses and declarations of loyalty and indignant repudiations of John Perrier's symbolic occupation of Thonon as to make Louis Bonaparte appear the soul of magnanimity when he contented himself with the actual occupation of Thonon and the rest of the neutralised territory.

John Perrier was arrested in Geneva with several thousand francs in his pockets. On the basis of Perrier's testimony M. Ducommun, the Vice-Chancellor of the state and editor of the Revue de Genève, a young man without private means, and dependent for his incumbency of these two posts on James Fazy, President of the State Council and owner of the Revue de Genève, was likewise arrested. He confessed to having given Perrier the money which had been taken from a fund set up to establish a volunteer corps—a fund whose existence had been quite unknown to the Geneva radicals up to that moment. The judicial investigation ended with the dismissal firstly of Ducommun and then of Perrier.

On March 24 Nice and Savoy, together with the neutralised territory, were officially ceded to Bonaparte by Victor Emmanuel. On March 29-30 John Perrier, who had returned from Paris to Geneva with Fazy, embarked on his Argonaut adventure, a burlesque demonstration which just at the crucial moment made any real demonstration impossible. In Berne, James Fazy insisted that "he had no knowledge of the incident". In the former neutral territory Laity boasted that if the Swiss had actually launched an attack there his Emperor would have at once ordered three divisions to march into Geneva. Vogt, finally, was quite in the dark about the secret of the journey of the Argonauts, for a few days before it took place he made a prophylactic denunciation to the Genevan police warning them of a conflict due to be engineered from Geneva on the Savoy frontier—but in so doing he was laying a false trail. I have in my possession a letter from a refugee living in Geneva, a former friend of Vogt's, to a refugee living in London. It says inter alia:

"Vogt was putting it about that I was continuously dashing backwards and forwards between West Switzerland and Savoy organising a revolution to the detriment of Switzerland and the advantage of powers hostile to it. This was only a few days before Perrier's adventure about which Vogt was undoubtedly in the know, but of which I was as ignorant as yourself. Evidently he attempted to cast suspicion on me and to ruin me. Fortunately, he also denounced me to Duy, the Director of Police who summoned me and was not a little surprised when I burst into laughter at his opening question and said: 'Aha! that well-known intrigue of Vogt's!' He then asked for details about my relations with Vogt. My statement was also confirmed by a government secretary, a member of the Helvetia, who went to the Central Assembly in Berne on the following day where he met Vogt's brother and criticised Karl's behaviour to him, whereupon Gustav replied laconically that he had long since gathered from Karl's letters how things stood with his politics."

If, to begin with, silence, denials and sermons of confidence in Louis Bonaparte were supposed to blind the Swiss to the impending danger, if later on the clamour about the intended incorporation of Faucigny, Chablais and the Genevese into Switzerland was designed to make the annexation of Savoy by France acceptable for the people, and if, finally, the burlesque at Thonon was intended to break any serious resistance, then, in accordance with the Paris programme, the annexation which had actually taken place and the danger that could no longer be denied were now to be put forward to induce the Swiss to surrender voluntarily, i.e. to enter an alliance with the December Empire. This task was of such an extreme delicacy that its accomplishment could only be entrusted to James Fazy himself. His servant Vogt was allowed to warn against an alliance with the East, but only Fazy himself could advocate an alliance with the West. He first hinted at the necessity of this in the Revue de Genève. On April 18, 1860 an excerpt from a London letter was circulating in Geneva which said, among other things:

"Our influential fellow-citizens should be warned to be on their guard against the advice of J. Fazy, who may well recommend that Switzerland should abandon its neutrality. It is highly likely that this advice emanates from the French Government itself, whom James Fazy has served zealously down to this very day.... He now assumes the posture of a good Swiss who is striving to thwart the designs of the French. However, I am told by someone who has always shown himself to be well informed that this is all just a snare. As soon as Switzerland has declared that it neither can nor will continue to remain neutral, the French Government will take notice of this and force it into an alliance as in the days of the First Empire."

Whereupon Fazy caused this reply to appear in the Revue de Genève:

"The day that Savoy is united with France the neutrality of Switzerland will cease of itself, so that any advice to that effect from Fazy would be superfluous."

Three months later, on July 10, James Fazy made a speech in the Swiss National Council in which

"fuming and raging and shaking his clenched fist at the Bonapartist financiers and the barons of the Confederation—he denounced them as le gouvernement souterrain—he marched straight into the Bonapartist camp".

The official French party of Zurich and the Vaud, seemingly the chief victim of his attack, therefore allowed him to continue blustering.

"Europe, and Germany in particular, has left Switzerland in the lurch. Neutrality has thereby become impossible; Switzerland must look around for alliances, but where?"

The old demagogue then muttered something to the effect that

"France, which was so near and closely related, would one day recognise and make good the wrong it had done. It might even become a republic, etc. But the financiers and barons of the Confederation who had outlived their day should not be allowed to initiate the new policy. Helvetia, the people must do that: Just wait and see, the next elections will teach you a lesson. The troops of the Confederation are most welcome in Geneva. However, if their presence raises the slightest doubts about the existing government of Geneva, then away with them. Geneva is able to look after itself and to defend itself."

On July 10, then, James Fazy elaborated in the National Council upon what he had hinted at in the Revue de Genève of April 18—"the new policy", the alliance between Switzerland and France, i.e. the annexation of Switzerland by the Decembrists. Well-informed Swiss thought that it was premature for Fazy to drop the anti-Bonapartist mask he had been wearing since his return from the Tuileries. However, it is precisely Fazy who displays a virtuosity in the art of calculated indiscretion that to some extent is reminiscent of that of Palmerston. It is well known that the most disreputable members of the "gouvernement souterrain" moved a vote of censure on Stämpfli in the National Council, because as Federal President he had grasped the situation and at one point had made the correct decision to use Federal troops to defend the neutralised territory against French violations. The motion of censure was defeated by an enormous majority, but Vogt's vote was not among them.

"Very typical," I was told in a letter from Switzerland at the time, "of Karl Vogt was his absence during the discussions in the Swiss Council of States on the motion of censure on Stämpfli, the President of the Confederation. As representative of the Canton of Geneva under threat from Bonaparte Vogt had perforce to vote for Stämpfli, the most energetic defender of this Canton. He is, moreover, both a personal friend of Stämpfli's and also greatly indebted to him. Vogt's father and two of his brothers earn their bread as employees of the Canton of Berne; a third brother was recently given a lucrative post as a senior Federal statistician, thanks to Stämpfli's mediation. Consequently it was hardly possible for Vogt to vote against his friend, benefactor and man of the people in an open ballot. On the other hand, it was even less possible for a Plon-Plonist to approve publicly a policy which was fighting Bonapartist aggression to the death. Hence his running away and sticking his head in the sand, but this left his broad backside clearly visible and exposed to a beating—the usual stratagem and the mundane destiny of the modern Falstaff."

The slogan of "Austrianism", which had emanated from the Tuileries, and had then been echoed so loudly by fames Fazy in the Revue de Genève and by his servant Vogt in the Biel Commis voyageur, in the Studien and in the "Magnum Opus", etc., now finally rebounded on Switzerland. Around the middle of April a poster appeared everywhere on the walls of Milan entitled: "Conflict between Napoleon and Switzerland." In it we read:

"Savoy appeared to Switzerland as an appetising tit-bit and, egged on by Austria, Switzerland hastened to obstruct the plans of Napoleon III on a matter that is exclusively the concern of Italy and France.... England and the other great powers of the north, except Austria, are not in the least opposed to the incorporation of Savoy. Switzerland alone, spurred on by Austria, which attempts to stir up trouble and rebellion in all the states allied to Sardinia, put in its veto.... Switzerland is an abnormal state which cannot resist the tide of the great principle of nationality for a long time. Germans, Frenchmen and Italians are not capable of submitting to the same laws. If Switzerland knows this it should reflect that in the Canton of Ticino it is the language of Foscolo and Giusti that is spoken, it should not forget that a large part of its population belongs to the great and magnanimous nation that calls itself French."

In short, it appears that Switzerland is an Austrian invention. While Vogt was at such pains to rescue Switzerland from the clutches of Austria, he charged one of his most trusted accomplices with the task of rescuing Germany. This was the garrulous Swabian, Karl Mayer of Esslingen, Rump parliamentarian, a would-be great man and at present owner of a bijouterie factory. At the ceremony to dedicate the banner of the Neuchatel German Workers' Association, held at The Crown in St. Blaise, the official speaker, Rump parliamentarian and jeweller, Karl Mayer of Esslingen, called upon Germany

"just to allow the French across the Rhine because otherwise things would never improve in Germany".

Two representatives of the Workers' Association of Geneva who returned in the new year (1860) after attending the ceremony, reported the incident. When their account was confirmed by the representatives of a number of other West Swiss associations, the Genevan headquarters released a circular containing a general warning about Bonapartist intrigues among German workers in Switzerland. I quote from a report of the circular lying before me:

"According to a reminiscence of the First Empire when a few Germans also tried to uphold Napoleon's dominion of the world truly believing that the colossus would not survive the demise of its hero and that then a unified Germany would at any rate be one of the provinces into which the Frankish Empire would disintegrate, and such a Germany would find it easier to win freedom—it was dismissed as political quackery to believe that one could drain a living body of blood and trust to the fantastic miracle that fresh blood would be produced to replace it. Moreover, the attempt was denounced to deny a great people the strength to help itself and the right to determine its own destiny. Finally, it was noted that Germany's hoped-for Messiah had just demonstrated in Italy precisely what he understood by the liberation of subject nationalities, etc., etc. The circular was addressed, as it stated, only to those Germans who were choosing the wrong means to achieve a good end, but it refused to become involved with venal journalists and ambitious ci-devants."

Simultaneously, the Aargauer Nachrichten, organ of the Helvetia, castigated

"the logic that the hedgehog should be allowed to enter the mole's burrow so that one could better catch hold of it and throw it out again, according to which fine logic the Ephialtes of this world should be given a free hand so that Leonidases might arise. A certain professor was behaving like Duke Ulrich of Württemberg in reverse; for the Duke attempted to return home from exile by making use of the Bundschuh, after the Riding Boot did not want to have anything to do with him, while the above-mentioned professor had ruined his relations with the Shoe and so was trying to patch things up with the Boot, etc."

This denunciation of Professor Vogt was significant because it appeared in an organ of the Helvetia. By way of compensation, as it were, he was given a favourable reception in L'Espérance, a paper founded in 1859 in Geneva by the French Treasury and which appeared in large format and with no expense spared. It was the task of L'Espérance to preach in favour of the annexation of Savoy and the Rhineland in particular and of Louis Bonaparte's Messianic destiny to liberate the subject nationalities in general. It is common knowledge in Geneva that Vogt was an habitué of the editorial office of L'Espérance and one of its most active contributors. I myself have been informed of details which put this fact beyond all doubt. What Vogt hints at in his Studien, what he had his accomplice Karl Mayer, the garrulous Swabian, Rump parliamentarian and jeweller from Esslingen, proclaim so loudly at Neuchâtel, is developed further in L'Espérance. For example, it says in its issue of March 25, 1860:

"If war with France is the only hope of the German patriots, what reason can they have for wishing to weaken the government of that country and to prevent it from attaining its natural frontiers? Could it be that the German people is far from sharing this hatred of France? However that may be, there are some very sincere German patriots, in particular among the most progressive German democrats" (namely the Vogt of the Empire, the Ranickel, Karl Mayer from Esslingen and tutti quanti), "who do not regard the loss of the left bank of the Rhine as a great misfortune, but who on the contrary are convinced that only after that loss political life will begin in Germany, a revived Germany founded on the alliance and merging with the civilisation of the European West."

Having been so precisely informed by Vogt of the views of the most progressive elements among the German democrats, L'Espérance declared in a leading article on May 30 that

"a plebiscite on the left bank of the Rhine would soon show that everyone there was in favour of the French".

Der Postheiri, a humorous Swiss magazine, then overwhelmed L'Espérance with bad jokes, referring to it as the "miserable jade" which in addition to the light laurels of Bacchus Plon-Plon now had also to endure the "weighty paunch" of his Silenus on its back.

The precision with which the Decembrist press manoeuvres were orchestrated can be seen in the following example. On May 30 L'Espérance in Geneva spoke of the cession of the left bank of the Rhine to the Decembrists by plebiscite; on May 31 Louis Jourdan in Le Siècle in Paris started to dig the trenches for the annexation of the Rhine, and in the beginning of June Le Propagateur du Nord et du Pas-de-Calais opened up with crude artillery fire against Belgium. Shortly before the statements of the Genevan mouthpiece, Edmond About declared in L'Opinion nationale that Sardinia's aggrandizement had compelled the Emperor "de prendre la Savoie ... c.-à-d. nous fermons notre porte", and, he continued, if Germany's desire for unification led to a similar enlargement of Prussia, "alors nous aurions à veiller à notre sûreté, àprendre la rive gauche du Rhin, c.-à-d. nous fermerions notre Porte". This frivolous door-keeper was immediately followed by A. A., that ponderous blockhead, the correspondent of L'Indépendance belge, a sort of Joseph Prudhomme and Sybil Extraordinary of the "providence" dwelling in the Tuileries. Meanwhile the enthusiasm for German unity peculiar to L'Espérance and the same paper's indignant denunciation of German anti-Decembrists who had fallen into the clutches of Austria, had reached such giddy heights that James Fazy, who was forced to observe certain diplomatic proprieties and who was moreover on the point of converting his Revue de Genève into La Nation suisse, magnanimously condescended to declare in the Revue that it was possible to oppose Bonapartism without being an Austrian.

Karl Vogt, German Dâ-Dâ, owner of a Decembrist recruitment office for the German press, Fazy's sub-agent, "agreeable companion" in the Palais Royal, Plon-Plon's Falstaff, Ranickel's "friend", prompter to the Biel Commis voyageur, contributor to L'Espérance, protégé of Edmond About, bard of the Lousiad—Karl Vogt had still to plumb the ultimate depths of depravity. In Paris he was to appear before the eyes of the world in the Revue contemporaine, arm in arm with Monsieur Edouard Simon. Let us consider for a moment what the Revue contemporaine is and who Monsieur Edouard Simon.

The Revue contemporaine was originally the official Decembrist publication in sharp contrast to the Revue des deux Mondes, which received contributions from the elegant writers, the men of the Journal des Débats, Orleanists, Fusionists, and above all professors of the Collège de France and members of the Institut. Since the latter could not be directly assigned to the Revue contemporaine, the attempt was made to detach them from the Revue des deux Mondes and so indirectly to force them to join the Decembrist Revue. However, the coup did not have much success. The proprietors of the Revue contemporaine even found it inexpedient to do business with the editorial committee foisted onto them by M. La Guéronnière. But since the ventriloquist of the Tuileries stood in need of mouthpieces tuned in various keys, the Revue contemporaine was then transformed into a semi-official magazine while the Revue européenne with the editorial committee imposed by La Guéronnière was installed as official review.

Now to Monsieur Edouard Simon, by nature a Rhine-Prussian Jew called Eduard Simon, who however cuts the most comical capers to pass himself off as an authentic Frenchman, while his style constantly betrays the fact that he is a Rhine-Prussian Jew translated into French.

Shortly after the Schiller festivities (November 1859) in the home of a London acquaintance I met a highly respectable businessman who had lived many years in Paris. He gave me a de-tailed account of the Parisian Schiller festivities, Schiller societies, etc. I interrupted him with a question about how German societies and meetings in Paris had managed to accommodate them-selves to the Decembrist police. He replied with a humorous grin:

"Naturally, there is no meeting without a mouchard, nor any society without its mouchard. To avoid all complications we decided once and for all to adopt the simple tactic—probatum est—of attracting a known spy and voting him on to the committee from the start. And we always have Edouard Simon at our disposal, a man who might have been made for the job. You are aware that La Guéronnière, who was formerly Lamartine's lackey and the manufacturer of long rigmaroles for Émile de Girardin, is now the Emperor's favourite, his privy stylist and at the same time the supreme censor of the French press. Well, Edouard Simon is La Guéronnières lap-dog, and," he added screwing up his nose, "he is a cur with a very unpleasant smell at that. Edouard Simon was unwilling to work pour le roi de Prusse, as I am sure you will find understandable, but decided that he would perform an incalculable service for civilisation and himself if he were to make common cause with the Decembrist system. He is a fellow with a small mind and a nasty character, but in the sphere of petty intrigue he is not without a certain ability. La Guéronnière installed his Edouard Simon in La Patrie to write some of the leading articles. This well illustrated the tact of the privy stylist. For the proprietor of La Patrie, a banker called Delamarre, is an arrogant, headstrong, surly parvenu who cannot endure anyone around him who is not an utterly servile and pliable creature. So Edouard Simon was the right man for the position, since despite his poisonous malice, he can be as smooth as an angora cat. Under the republic La Patrie was, as you know, one of the most brazen mouthpieces of the rue de Poitiers, Since the December coup it has quarrelled with Le Pays and Le Constitutionnel for the honour of being recognised as the semi-official organ of the Tuileries and ever since the signal was given it has gone in for the annexation-fever in a big way. You know of those beggars who pretend to have epileptic attacks on the street so as to swindle passers-by of a few coppers. It was indeed an honour to La Patrie that it was allowed to be the first to announce the imminent annexation of Savoy and Nice. Scarcely had the annexation taken place when it enlarged its format, for, as M. Delamarre naively declared: 'La Savoie et le Comté de Nice ayant été annexés à la France, la conséquence naturelle est l'agrandissement de la Patrie.' Who is not put in mind of the witticism of a Parisian cynic who when asked 'Qu'est-ce que la patrie?' replied 'Journal du soir'. If moreover the Rhine provinces were annexed, what an increase there would be then in La Patrie and its format and in the salaire of Edouard Simon! As far as economic policy is concerned La Patrie believes that the salvation of France is to be achieved by abolishing the tourniquet de la Bourse. as a result of which business on the Exchange and hence throughout the land would again soar to the desired level. Edouard Simon is equally enthusiastic about the abolition of the tourniquet de la Bourse. However, our Edouard Simon is not only a writer of leading articles for La Patrie and La Guéronnière's lap-dog. He is the most sincere friend and informer of the new Jerusalem, alias the Prefecture of Police, and of M. Palestrina in particular. In short, gentlemen," the narrator concluded, "a committee with M. Edouard Simon in its bosom is by that very fact in the very best police odour."

And Herr ... gave a curiously shrill laugh as if there were a further ineffably secret connection between Monsieur Edouard Simon and the odeur de mauvais lieu.

Mr. Kinglake has drawn the attention of the House of Commons to the pleasant confusion of foreign policy, the police and the press, so characteristic of the Decembrist agents (session of the House of Commons, July 12, 1860). Of course, Monsieur Edouard Simon—Vogt's infamous Eduard is not to be confused with Vogt's gentle Kunigunde, alias Ludwig Simon of Trier—Monsieur Edouard Simon, La Guéronnière's lap-dog, Delamarre's poodle, Palestrina's spy and general dogsbody, clearly belongs if not to the cream at least to the Limburg cheese of the 10th December, to the Second Circle where

"s'annida

Ipocrisia, lusinghe, e chi affatura,

Falsità, ladroneccio, e simonia,

Ruffian, baratti, e simile lordura".

Many weeks before the publication of the "Magnum Opus" Karl Vogt had commissioned his Edouard Simon to review it in the French press. Edouard Simon opted for double emploi. First, he privately translated the "Magnum Opus" for M. La Guéronnière and in this connection his patron then assigned him to the Revue contemporaine. It was in vain that the editorial board of the Revue contemporaine humbly pleaded that if Edouard Simon were to appear in their columns it should at least be anonymously. La Guéronnière was inexorable. Edouard Simon made his debut in the Revue contemporaine of February 15, 1860 with an advertisement for his friend Vogt under the title: "Un tableau de mœurs politiques de l'Allemagne. Le procès de M. Vogt avec la Gazette d'Augsbourg" (Political Portrait of Germany. Herr Vogt's Action against the Augsburg Gazette), signed—Edouard Simon.

The "Romanic" Edouard Simon does not believe that "he needs to hurl invective at the noble German race in order to prove himself a good Frenchman" (Revue contemporaine, loc. cit., p. 531), but as a "good Frenchman" and a "Romanic by birth" he must at least exhibit his innate ignorance of German affairs. Thus among other statements he asserts of his Karl Vogt: "He was one of the three Regents of the short-lived Empire."Monsieur Edouard Simon does not know of course that the Empire in partibus groaned under the rule of a pentarchy, and "as a Frenchman" he imagines that if only for the sake of symmetry there were three parliamentary Regents of the Empire in Stuttgart corresponding to the three wise kings of Cologne. "Friend" Vogt's jokes in the "Magnum Opus" "frequently go beyond the limits of French taste". Edouard the Frenchman will remedy this and will "strive to make a judicious selection". "Friend" Vogt has a natural liking for "garish colours" and "is not exactly subtle in his use of language". Naturally! For "friend" Vogt is only a German who has been annexed, just as Dâ-Dâ is only an Arab who has been annexed, whereas Edouard Simon is a "good Frenchman" by birth and belongs to the "Romanic" race. Did Herr Orges and Herr Dietzel ever go so far in their slander of the "Romanic race"?

Monsieur Edouard Simon amuses his superiors by exhibiting one of the "three" wise German Rump-Kings to the Paris public, with the agreement, moreover, and on the instructions of that Holy German Rump-King, and parading him as a voluntary prisoner in the wake of the triumphal carriage of the Imperial Quasimodo. It is obvious, says Edouard Simon, after quoting from Vogt's "Magnum Opus",

"it is obvious that it did not matter to Herr Vogt from where help might come in favour of German unity, provided only that it did come; he even regarded the French Empire as particularly well fitted to hasten the realisation of the solution he favoured. Perhaps Herr Vogt abandoned his old antecedents too cheaply (?!), and his former colleagues who had sat with him on the extreme Left of the Frankfurt Parliament must have been astonished to see this intransigent opponent of every unified power, this passionate zealot of anarchy, display such lively sympathies for the sovereign who has subdued anarchy in France".

Edouard transfers the "fugitive Regent of the Empire" from the un-"committed" Left to the extreme Left of the Frankfurt Parliament. The man who voted in favour of "the hereditary German Emperor" is transformed into an "intransigent opponent of every unified power", and the member of the Central March Association who preached "order" at any price to the motley parties inhabiting the taverns of Frankfurt becomes a "passionate zealot of anarchy". And all this to put the achievement of the 10th December in capturing the "fugitive Regent of the Empire" into its proper perspective. All the more precious are the "lively sympathies" which Herr Vogt "cherishes for the man who had subdued anarchy in France", all the more valuable his present recognition "that the French Empire is particularly well fitted to bring about the unity of Germany", and all the more comprehensible is "friend" Simon's broad hint that "friend" Vogt "perhaps abandoned his antecedents too cheaply (de bon marché)", i.e. the December man at any rate did not have to pay "too dearly". And in order to remove every doubt that might have remained in higher places that "friend" Vogt might not be as utterly reliable as "friend" Simon, Monsieur Edouard Simon explains with a grin and a wink, rubbing his hands the while, that Vogt in his passion for order, "if he has understood him rightly, has even notified the Genevan authorities of revolutionary intrigues" that have come to his attention, just as Monsieur Edouard Simon "notified" Messrs. Palestrina and La Guéronnière. It is common knowledge that About and Jourdan and Granier de Cassagnac and Boniface and Dr. Hoffmann, that the monks of L'Espérance, the knights of Les Nationalités, the bellows of L'Opinion nationale, the penny-a-liners of L'Indépendance, The Morning Chronicle, the Nouvelliste Vaudois, etc., that the La Guéronnières and the Simons, the stylists, civilisationists, Decembrists, Plon-Plonists, Dentuists and dentists one and all take their inspiration from one and the same illustrious—money-box. So we see that Dâ-Dâ Vogt is no solitary partisan fighting a lonely battle, but is subsidised, indoctrinated, enlisted, enrolled along with the canaille, bound up with Edouard Simon, annexed by Plon-Plon, and sticking to them through thick and thin. The remaining question is whether Karl Vogt has been paid for his agency?

"If I am not mistaken, to bribe means to offer someone money or other advantages to perform actions or make utterances contrary to his own convictions" ("Magnum Opus", p. 217).

And Plon-Plonism is the sum of Vogt's convictions. So that even if he was paid in cash, he was by no means bribed. But the modes of payment are at least as various as the different forms of coinage.

Who knows whether Plon-Plon did not promise his Falstaff the post of governor of the Mouse Tower near the Binger Loch? Or nomination as corresponding member of the Institut, now that About in his La Prusse en 1860 has made French naturalists quarrel over the honour of corresponding simultaneously with the living Vogt and the dead Dieffenbach? Or perhaps he held out prospects of a restoration of his Regency of, the Empire?

I know of course that current reports provide a more prosaic explanation. Thus it is said that "with the change of circumstances since 1859" there has been a change in the circumstances of our "agreeable companion" (who had shortly before been one of the managers of a joint-stock company which had run aground and became the subject of a criminal investigation). His anxious friends tried to explain away these developments by claiming that an Italian mining company had presented Vogt with a large number of shares in recognition of his contributions to "mineralogy", a gift which he had turned into cash during his first stay in Paris. People conversant with the situation but who do not know each other, have written to me almost simultaneously from Switzerland and France informing me that the "agreeable companion" had assumed the fairly profitable superintendence of an estate called "La Bergerie" near Nyon (in the Vaud). The estate is the widow's seat which Plon-Plon purchased for the Iphigenia of Turin. I have even seen a letter written by a "New Swiss" who was still on terms of intimacy with Vogt long after "the change in circumstances of 1859" to a "Mr. P. B. B. of 78 Fenchurch Street, London" early in 1860 in which he mentions a very considerable sum of money which his ex-friend had received from the treasury in Paris, not as a bribe, but as payment in advance.

Such items of news and worse have made their way to London, but for my part I would not give a brass farthing for them. I rather believe Vogt implicitly, when he says that

"it is no one's business where I" (Vogt) "get my money from. I shall continue to try to obtain whatever resources are needed to achieve my political ends, and conscious that I am working for a good cause I shall continue to obtain them from wherever I can" ("Magnum Opus", p. 226) —

hence also from the Paris treasury.

Political ends!

"Nugaris, cum tibi, Calve,

Pinguis aqualiculus propenso sesquipede extet."

Good cause! This is apparently the German idealistic expression for what the Englishman with his coarse materialism calls "the good things of this world".

Whatever Dr. Schaible may think of it, why should we not believe Vogt implicitly, since in the same "Magnum Opus" he declares with equal seriousness at the end of his tall stories about the Brimstone Gang, etc.:

"That concludes this phase of contemporary history. What I have described are no mere day-dreams; they are pure facts!" ("Magnum Opus", p. 182.)

Why shouldn't his agency be just as pure as the facts recounted in the "Magnum Opus"?

For my part, I am firmly convinced that, in contrast to all the other writing, agitating, politicising, conspiring, propagandising, boasting, Plon-Plonising, plotting and self-compromising members of the December Gang, it is solely and exclusively the unique Vogt who regards his Emperor as "l'homme qu'on aime pour lui-même".

"Swerz niht geloubt, der sündet", as Wolfram von Eschenbach says, or "He errs who does not believe it", as a contemporary song says.