Under this always aggravated system the newspapers, from year to year,
become so barren that the police, to interest and amuse the public,
contrive a pen warfare in their columns between one amateur of French
music and one of Italian music.
Books, almost as rigorously kept within bounds, are mutilated or
prevented from appearing.[58] Chateaubriand is forbidden to reprint
his "Essay on Revolutions," published in London under the Directory.
In "L'Itin?raire de Paris ? J?rusalem" he is compelled to cut out "a
good deal of declamation on courts, courtiers and certain features
calculated to excite misplaced allusions." The censorship interdicts
the " Dernier des Abencerrages," where" it finds too warm an interest
in the Spanish cause." One must read the entire register to see it at
work and in detail, to feel the sinister and grotesque minutia with
which it pursues and destroys, not alone among great or petty writers
but, again, among compilers and insignificant abbreviators, in a
translation, in a dictionary, in a manual, in an almanac, not only
ideas but suggestions, echoes, semblances and oversights in thinking,
the possibilities of awakening reflection and comparison :
* every souvenir of the ancient r?gime, this or that mention of Kl?ber
or Moreau, or a particular conversation of Sully and Henry IV.
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