the case for liberalism; the Florentine politician Machiavelli would present the case for despotism. In the Dialogue, Machiavelli claims that he "... wouldn't even need twenty years to transform utterly the most indomitable European character and render it as a docile under tyranny as the debased people of Asia." Montesquieu insists that the liberal spirit of the peoples is invincible. In 25 dialogues, step by step, Machiavelli, who by Joly's plot covertly represents Napoleon III, explains how he would replace freedom with despotism in any given European country: "...Absolute power will no longer be an accident of fortune but will become a need" of the modern society. At the end, Machiavelli prevails. In the curtain-line Montesquieu exclaims "Eternal God, what have you permitted!..." The book was published anonymously (with the by-line , 'by a contemporary') in Brussels in 1864 and smuggled into France for distribution, but the print-run was seized by the police immediately upon crossing the border. The police swiftly tracked down its author, and Joly was arrested. The book was banned. On 25 April 1865, he was sentenced to 18 months at the Sainte-Pélagie Prison in Paris. The second edition of the Dialogues was issued in 1868 under Joly's name. This time, it reached the readers. But its author remained in obscurity. He established a new journal, Le Palais, that ended after a confrontation with the principal collaborator in the enterprise. After the fall of the Empire in 1870, Joly sought a governmental position from Jules Grévy. He failed in this too. Campaigning against Napoleon III at the 1870 French constitutional referendum, Joly wrote an epilogue to his Dialogues. It was published in Le Gaulois and La Cloche magazines. In 1871, he was a low-rank member of the Paris Commune and in his last years he joined the Masonic lodge La Clémente Amitié. Though it gained Joly the reputation of a scandalous and bully barrator, he sued ten newspapers, one after another, either for not accepting his stories or for not publishing news about him. Joly's name was completely forgotten, and in life he did not attain the glory he so obsessively craved. Joly was found dead on 15 July 1878 in his 5 Quai Voltaire apartment in Paris. The declared cause of his death was gunshot suicide. The circumstances meant that the exact date of his death could not be established. Posthumous fame The Dialogue and its