It’s not that M.C.D. doesn't joke sometimes; but, by a strange fate, it is precisely then that he stops making people laugh. In striving to avenge the National Guard, which has no need of his apology, he says, with the grace he is known for: "Seeing it being part of the Dictionary, I have not lost the hope to meet God himself there; because, in the system of weathervanes, God also deserves his small share of a good market price…He is, I dare say, infinitely more of a weathervane; he in turn, and without party distinction, shines its sun on the French republicans, those obedient to Buonaparte, or subjects of the Bourbons." This remark of such good taste should have given the Censor a very natural reflection: that the multitude of names inscribed in the Dictionary, the large number of honest people found there, and the innocence of the most of the weathervanes that we see turning there greatly diminish the importance of the book, and erase all its odiousness.
If the weathervane lexicographers had only pointed out the variations due to greed and ingratitude, their book would be a defamatory libel; but they avoided all danger by declaring that, to be their colleague, it was enough to have been a de facto weathervane independently of intention and even necessity.
So, far from applauding myself for not being included in this Dictionary, I very sincerely reproach the authors for this omission which resembles contempt. It is certain that I wore the tricolor cockade, and that I took it off; it is also true that I still wrote when it was that of the Debates. I therefore deserve at least two weathervanes, and I hope to have them in the third edition of the work.
In a second and final article I will talk about the Dictionary itself, and if M.C.D. suspects me of being one of the collaborators or admirers of the Girouettes, he will be completely disillusioned.
