The English embassador now received instructions to demand that
France should cede to England, Malta for ten years; and that England,
by way of compensation, would recognize the Italian republic. The
embassador was ordered to apply for his passports, if these conditions
were not accepted within seven days. To this proposition France
would not accede. The English minister demanded his passports, and
left France. Immediately the English fleet commenced its attack
upon French merchant-ships, wherever they could be found. And the
world was again deluged in war.
France has recorded her past history and her present condition, in
the regal palaces she has reared. Upon these monumental walls are
inscribed, in letters more legible than the hieroglyphics of Egypt,
and as ineffaceable, the long and dreary story of kingly vice,
voluptuousness and pride, and of popular servility and oppression.
The unthinking tourist saunters through these magnificent saloons,
upon which have been lavished the wealth of princes and the toil
of ages, and admires their gorgeous grandeur. In marbled floors
and gilded ceilings and damask tapestry, and all the appliances of
boundless luxury and opulence, he sees but the triumphs of art, and
bewildered by the dazzling spectacle, forgets the burning outrage
upon human rights which it proclaims.
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