Pierre Célestin ROUX-LAVERGNE (1802-1874) historian and journalist, he was deputy of Ille-et-Vilaine (1848-1849). L.A.S., Paris December 7, 1851, to a friend; 4 pages in-8, on the letterhead of the newspaper L'Univers. Reaction to the coup d'état of December 2, 1851. "Are we not at the beginning of the end? [...] I find in Louis-Napoléon very marked providential symptoms. They can be summed up in one word: he blends the Bourgeois and the Socialist. The Church is untouched, on the contrary." The Bourgeois are furious, as is Villemain; "Freethinkers are at bay; Socialists are roaring. The people alone find the trick subtle, bold, well played, worthy of a Napoleon, and it's true. [...] Through a narrow peephole in the 10th arrondissement town hall, I saw the elite of parliamentary France give a performance worthy of the Théâtre Guignol". He recounts the speeches of Vatimesnil "pale with anger like Polichinelle at the moment of being carried away by the Devil", Berryer "brandishing his scarf", Oudinot: "What a farce! They were prisoners. When we thought they'd amused the audience enough, an officer closed the window. It's just like at the fair: the show's about to start. He was not one of the furious; the watchword of the socialists, according to Pierre Larousse, was "fire, barricades made of whole houses, seizing all the churches; and I," added his friend Pierre, "will preach there. [...] Louis Napoleon is either a hero or a madman. [...] So far, he really seems to be one of those men into whose hands God puts people. He is, it is said, the divine Crane destined to crush the Orleanist toad and the socialist snake"...