There was tenderness and persuasion in the old man’s voice that touched the mercurial nature of his son. He no longer paced the floor, like a caged panther, but went close to his father, and answered him with an earnestness so deep, and evidently so sincere, that the old man, for the first time in his life, was thrilled with a sentiment of respect for his wayward son. “But I am not sure that it is right. These good people of Paris are beginning to feel that humanity has been trampled down too long; that a king is invested with the purple for some higher purpose than self-indulgence. If I attempt to lead the people to the feet of Louis the Sixteenth, he must meet them half-way.” “Louis the Sixteenth is a just king.” “But he is surrounded by unjust courtiers, influenced by a wife trained in the Austrian school of statesmanship. No real truth will ever be permitted to reach him while a cordon of churchmen and noble leeches is drawn closer and closer around him every day. Nothing but a moral earthquake can root out the traditions of royal prerogatives and noble privileges which have chained the people down till the shackles are eaten through with age and rust, and it only wants a vigorous blow to dash them asunder. When the king is made to understand this, his good heart may bring him in real sympathy with the people.” “You do not understand Louis,” said the father, after a moment of breathless silence, for Mirabeau had spoken with an outburst of feeling that astonished the old man. “No king ever lived who felt more kindly towards his subjects.” “But Louis must do something more than feel; he must act in his own person fearlessly, independently. The people love him, no matter how deeply they hate his nobles; he can never convince them that his heart is in the right place while the Bastille is crowded full of groaning humanity, that their malice may be appeased; while the prisons all over France are choked up by victims that are yet suffering injustice done them by the old king and his parasites. I tell you, sir, these evils must be redressed, or the people will rise up in their wrath and learn what strength lies in multitudes.” “But who would dare to speak such language to the King of France!” said the old man, half-frightened by his son’s impetuosity. “In the very thought there is something like treason.” “I dare,” answered Mirabeau, proudly. “Why not; there are hard truths that must be accepted, sooner or later, either from the lips of such friends to France as I am, or at the point of the bayonet.” “The point of the bayonet, and against the king.” “Father, do not remain wilfully blind, for, as surely as you and I live, it will come to that unless the king arouses himself to the peril which threatens him, and asserts his own authority.” “But who will dare to tell him this?” “Some one must, or the people of France will enlighten him with a roar of thunder. If you love him, and have sufficient courage—”