"Like all men given to excess,--pardon the remark, marquis, but you have yourself admitted it,--you exaggerate the present unquiet state of affairs. The people will not revolt. They have no real cause. If you had made such a statement twenty years ago during the ascendancy of the infamous du Barry I might not have contradicted you. But now the people as a mass are loyal. They love their king." "I still affirm," said St. Hilaire, "that the time is ripe for a revolution. Sooner or later it must come." The chevalier from the further end of the table said quietly; "It _has_ come." "Surely you are not serious," said d'Arlincourt, turning to the chevalier, "in calling the disturbance of the past few days a revolution. Why, I have seen more serious revolts than this blow into nothing. Our Paris mob is a fickle creature, demanding blood one moment and the next moment throwing up its cap with delight if you show it a colored picture." "The disturbance of to-day will become great enough to shake France to its centre," said the chevalier. "One would think that you possessed the gift of second sight," laughed de Lacheville. "I do," replied the old man impressively. "Give us an example of it, then," demanded d'Arlincourt. "What part am I to take in the new revolution?" "I see behind you, my dear d'Arlincourt," replied the chevalier, leaning back in his chair and looking in the count's direction through half-closed eyelids, "the shadow of a scaffold." Unwittingly the count turned with a start, to see Blaise standing behind him in the act of filling his glass with wine. There was a general laugh. "Madame de Rémur will bare her white shoulders to the rude grasp of the executioner. De Lacheville will escape. No, he will not. He will die by his own hand to cheat the scaffold." "And I," interrupted the Countess d'Arlincourt, "shall I share their fate?" The chevalier looked at her with a peculiar expression in his eyes. "My sight fails here," he said. "I cannot foretell your fate. Yet you may live; your beauty should save you. People do not kill those who please them; those who bore them are less fortunate." And he turned his snapping brown eyes in the direction of the gentle poet and the venerable philosopher. "St. Hilaire's sudden and great interest in the people's welfare may prove of service to him," remarked d'Arlincourt significantly. "It will not save him," replied the chevalier. "He will finally come to the same end. The shadow of the scaffold is behind him also." St. Hilaire laughed as he cracked an almond. "Though I may sympathize somewhat with a people who have been oppressed and robbed, I should feel unhappy indeed to be left out in the cold when so many of the illustrious had gone before. But you have overlooked yourself. That is like you, chevalier, unselfish to the last." "Oh, I am too old to be of importance; I shall die of gout," said the old nobleman.