BARBEY d'AUREVILLY Jules (1808-1889) Very... - Lot 21 - Vermot et Associés

BARBEY d'AUREVILLY Jules (1808-1889) Very fine handwritten political text titled: "Les Bottes de foin". 2 folio pages (rough edge repairs). Superb polemical text, written in colored inks, attacking Political Parties, the Republic, Democracy, on the occasion of the candidacy for deputation (probably in 1873) of Désiré Barodet, a politician known for his violent anticlericalism. "...if he thinks it's on his merits...that the Republicans - his brothers and his friends - are so furiously crowing and clamoring about his candidacy, the poor man's in a famous delusion! And it's not just us monarchists who'll get him out of it; it's not just us who'll warn him that he's the most pathetic grotesque that Democracy, that woman of clowns, has ever married...It's his own friends-the but of Job at this Job Politique..."; "....These hungry democrats, enticed by the smell of hay, have they not swallowed the haystack of Hugo, which Rochefort, when it was only half swallowed, called wet hay capable of giving colic and flatulence to the majestic belly of the Republic..."; "...So Barodet, what will you do and what will you be once swallowed and digested by your delicious little mother, Democracy? And what will be left of your interesting person, Barodet, if not what remains of a sailor, in the infected air, on a shore where anthropophagi have passed..."; "...the question for us is this - and this is the most terrible and thoroughgoing argument against the republic...is there anything more revolting and disgusting to proud minds and noble men than those systems of government where no one is taken for his own worth, but where everyone can be chosen in spite of the worth he doesn't have? ..."; "...And it doesn't even bother to lie, Democracy! It says cynically, like the privateer: take my monkey! ...Ah, make no mistake! this is the essence of Democracy! for it, personalities are nothing, because one day they can be everything! A man of great personality is always odious or suspect to any Republic. What this government needs, which is nothing but the organization of envy, are puppets who can be thrown into the fire once the strings have been broken, puppets, Barodets...". A very fine political text.