Excerpt from The Downfall: La Débâcle, the Smash-Up<br><br>Briefly though inadequately put, this is the claim, these are the premises, to himself self-evident, universal, and sufficient, which constitute the framework of our author's theory. And the material. It is antiquated rubbish to suppose that the choice of subject in any way exhibits the quality of the artist's genius; the face of the murderer is as enlightening as that of the saint, the mother who has. Drowned her child is as elemental to society as the Madonna. Why go far afield? We are in the middle of the nineteenth century, in the heart of a people which claims to have freed from bondage both physical and mental the modern lands of Greece and Italy, the well springs of classicism; we are part of that rich social allu vium deposited in Gaul since the davs of Julius Caesar, a soil from which spring the brightest flowers of new-born human intelligence. We take the second Napoleonic em pire as we find it. Let this be our theme, the subject of our epopee. \vhat a harvest for the novelist! What a laboratory for analysis and experiment! Here are men and women, the product of scientific processes still at work; here is a society the most complex and modern yet evolved. Here is an imperial democracy; or is it a democratic empire? Here certainly is a military state.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.