‘Anything, everything; for the future all is possible. We have annihilated legitimacy, it is true, just as the Indians destroy a forest, by burning the trees; but the roots remain; and if the soil is incapable of sending up the giant stems as before, it is equally unable to furnish a new and different culture. Monarchy is just as firmly rooted in a Frenchman’s heart, but he will have neither patience for its tedious growth, nor can he submit to restore what has cost him so dearly to destroy. The consequences will, therefore, be a long and continued struggle between parties, each imposing upon the nation the form, of government that pleases it in turn. Meanwhile you and I, and others like us, must serve whatever is uppermost--the cleverest fellow he who sees the coming change, and prepares to take advantage of it.’ ‘Then you are a Royalist?’ asked I. ‘A Royalist! What! stand by a monarch who deserted his aristocracy, and forgot his own order; defend a throne that he had reduced to the condition of a _fauteuil de Bourgeois?_’ ‘You are then for the Republic?’ ‘For what robbed me of my inheritance--what degraded me from my rank, and reduced me to a state below that of my own vassals! Is this a cause to uphold?’ ‘You are satisfied with military glory, perhaps,’ said I, scarcely knowing what form of faith to attribute to him. ‘In an army where my superiors are the very dregs of the people; where the canaille have the command, and the chivalry of France is represented by a sans-culotte!’ ‘The cause of the Church----’ A hurst of ribald laughter cut me short, and laying his hand on my shoulder he looked me full in the face; while with a struggle to recover his gravity, he said--