The Sword of Honor; or, The Foundation of the French Republic. Эжен Сю
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of rascals from the suburb of St. Victor, they went off all together to the Hospital of the Invalids in search of weapons."
"And were received, no doubt, with the gun-fire of the brave veterans sheltered there?" said the Count.
"Alas, no! my lord. The pensioners made not the slightest resistance, and the scoundrelly people fell into possession of more than thirty thousand guns and several cannon."
"The veterans!" gasped the Viscount of Mirabeau. "They, old soldiers, to give up their arms! Do we then face defection and treason on every side! Very well! we shall hang and shoot the invalids, men and officers, to the last one."
"Oh, the idea!" shouted the Marquis, with another burst of forced laughter, "So now our bare-feet have thirty thousand guns—and some cannon—which they don't know how to use!"
"You have nothing else to tell us?" said Plouernel to the steward.
"No, my lord."
"Then send our men out again for information. The instant they return, come to me with what they have learned."
The steward bowed for the third time and withdrew. Upon the faces of the convivial friends blank consternation reigned at the news he had brought. They gazed at one another speechless.
"Do you know, gentlemen," at last spoke up the Cardinal, "that all this is getting frightful? The very marrow in my bones is chilled."
"It is my opinion," the Duke answered, "that France will soon be no longer habitable. We shall have to flee abroad."
"Come, come, my dear Duke," said the Count of Plouernel, "a few regiments of infantry, supported by a piece of artillery or two, will suffice to exterminate these upstarts. The French nobility will whip them down. We shall unsheath our swords."
"I think the rabble will whip better troops than those, once they have got the smell of gunpowder," said Abbot Morlet.
"You are talking nonsense, Abbot," replied Mirabeau. "It is impossible that bare-footed ragamuffins, poorly armed, and without discipline, should be victorious over seasoned troops. If it ever came to that pass, I should snap my sword."
For the first time since the arrival of the momentous news, Victoria spoke: "A traitorous King would prevent you from breaking it; he would order you to return it to its scabbard."
"It is for us to have the courage to sacrifice the King to the safety of the monarchy. We shall have all the brave ones—" Mirabeau began.
"By heaven!" interrupted the Duke, "this is serious, and requires thought. Sacrifice the King!"
"What shall we do with the King?" questioned the Cardinal.
"In other times," replied Victoria, "they shut up do-nothing Kings in, the depths of a cloister. Force Louis XVI to abdicate. The Dauphin is an infant, you will constitute a council of regents, composed of men of inflexibility. The shameless plebeians have too much blood; it will rise to their heads and give them a false energy. Bleed them, bleed them white, by repression and defeat. You have cannons and muskets; bombard them—blow them back into the depths they sprung from!"
"Ah, Marchioness," answered Plouernel, "you are the terrible archangel who with her flaming sword will defend the monarchy and nobility. You are right. Safety lies in the abdication of the King and the formation of an inflexible council of regents. The monarch must be eliminated."
"Your most dangerous enemy, Count of Plouernel," replied she, "is the Third Estate! Has this bourgeoisie not told you, through Sieyès's organ, that up till now it has been nothing, it which ought to be everything! There is the enemy. The people, its intoxication once passed, will fall back into its misery and abject submissiveness. Having cried its cry in the public place, hunger will again seize it by the throat. 'The people, always ridden by want, has never the time to carry out the revolutions which it essays.' It is against the bourgeoisie that war to the knife must be carried on."
"For one proof out of a thousand of the truth of that statement," assented the Count, "is not Desmarais the lawyer one of the firiest tribunes in the National Assembly?"
"My dear Count," said the cavalry officer to Plouernel, "did you not once treat a fellow of that name to a good cudgeling?"
"This Desmarais is himself the hero of that episode you refer to—the very same whippersnapper," answered the Count.
Aside Victoria said to herself: "And my brother John is the sweetheart of Mademoiselle Desmarais. A singular coincidence!"
"How did you come to give him his cudgel sauce, Count?" inquired the Cardinal.
"My counsel were arguing before the court a case involving an estate left to my brother, Abbot Plouernel, at present in Rome. Desmarais, forgetting the respect due to a man of my station, had the insolence to speak of me in terms hardly reverent. Informed of the fact by my attorneys, I had Desmarais seized by three of my servants one night as he was leaving his lodgings. They administered to him a sound drubbing with green sticks, after which my first lackey said to him: 'Sir, the thrashing which we have just had the honor of presenting to you, is from Monseigneur Plouernel, our master. Let the lesson be a profitable one.'"
"That," said the Viscount of Mirabeau, "was as good as the exquisite bastinado given to Arouet 'Voltaire' by the orders of the Prince of Rohan. That's the way to treat the bourgeoisie."
"Voltaire perhaps owes his fame to that little chastisement," suggested the Duke.
Coming back to the subject which was on everyone's mind, Abbot Morlet was the next to speak. "Madam the Marchioness has just uttered a great truth," said he. "The Church, the nobility and royalty have no more terrible enemy than the bourgeoisie. In a state, three elements are necessary for a good organization—a God, a King, and a people. In order to carry on production and nourish the representatives of God and the King, the bourgeoisie should be suppressed."
"You are stingy in your allotments, Abbot," put in the Duke. "Would you, then, suppress the nobility?"
"Who says King says nobility, and who says God says clergy," replied the Abbot. "In other words, if we wish to enjoy our privileges in peace, we must either extirpate or annul the bourgeoisie. Now, if we know how to use the people skilfully, they will come to our aid in this task of extirpation, for the plebeian hates a bourgeois more than he does a noble."
"Still, we see the populace gone mad over the deputies of the Third Estate. Several of them have already grown to the bulk of idols," said the Count.
"The bourgeoisie is, and will for still a long time remain, as hostile toward the people as it is toward the nobles. The people know this, and that is what renders them hostile to the bourgeoisie," Victoria declared.
"It is marvellous how the thoughts of Madam the Marchioness accord with mine," exclaimed Abbot Morlet. "This antagonism which she has just mentioned will some day, perhaps, be our salvation; for I have no faith in the party of the court, composed in part, as it is, of young mad-caps."
"By heaven, Abbot," the whole company cried with one voice, "but you are impertinent!"
The Abbot shrugged his shoulders and continued impassively. "The revolution will plunge on in its course. First the royalty and the nobility will fall beneath the blows of the tribunes of the Third Estate. Then will fall the Church—but only to rerise more powerful than before, to rear again the scaffolds and relight the pyres of the Inquisition."
"You are talking nonsense, Abbot," again put in Barrel Mirabeau. "Your prophecies partake of desperation."
"Nobility and royalty will disappear in the tempest," pursued the Abbot, "but it remains with us to make that disappearance one of the phases of a rebirth that will establish theocracy more powerful than ever. The instant will be decisive, momentous. It may one day come about that the bourgeoisie will merge its cause with that of the populace; that it will establish education free, unified, common, and uncontrolled by the Church; that it will abolish private property, making common to each and all the tools of production. Should the bourgeoisie decide thus to emancipate the proletariat,