and keeping them divided, we shall assiduously rekindle the rivalries, jealousies, and where needed, the old provincial hatreds. To that end an occasional little douse of civil war will be a helpful expedient. It breeds and nurses the germs of implacable animosity." The Cardinal stopped a moment to take another pinch of snuff, and then concluded with these words: "People who are divided by hatred never conspire." The merciless logic of the priest repelled the Count of Plouernel. Despite his own fatuity and caste prejudices, he rather leaned towards modern thought. No doubt he would have preferred a reign of "legitimate Kings." But he did not stop to think that he who wants the end must not object to the means, and that, in order to be lasting in the eyes of its partisans, a complete and absolute restoration could not possibly take place and maintain itself except by the frightful means that the Cardinal had just laid bare with complacent assurance. The colonel replied with a smile: "But, uncle, think of it! In these days of ours the idea of isolating the population is chimerical. The thing is impossible! What about the strategic highways! The railroads!" "The railroads?" echoed the Cardinal angrily. "A devil's invention, good only to cause the revolutionary fever to circulate from one end of Europe to the other! For that very reason our Holy Father wants no railroads in his states, and right he is. It is incredible that the monarchs of the Holy Alliance could have allowed themselves to yield to such diabolical innovations! They may have to pay dear therefor! What did our forefathers do, at the time of the conquest, with a view to subjugate and keep the yoke riveted to the neck of this perverse Gallic race--our vassals by birth and by kind, that has so often risen in rebellion against us? Our ancestors staked them within their separate domains, forbidding them to step outside under penalty of death. Thus chained to the glebe, thus isolated and brutified, the breed is more easily kept under control--that must be the goal we should aim at returning to." "But I repeat--what about the railroads? You would not tear up the highways and railroads, would you, uncle?" "Why not? Did not the Franks, our ancestors, in pursuit of an unerring policy, tear up the highways, the magnificent roads of communication that they found in Gaul, and which those pagans of Romans had constructed? Would it be so difficult a task to hurl against the railroads the mass of brutes whom that infernal invention threw out of their means of earning a livelihood? Anathema--anathema against those proud monuments of haughty Satan! By the blood of my race! If he is not curbed in his sacrilegious career, man will yet end--may God forefend!--by changing this valley of tears into a terrestrial paradise, wholly oblivious of the fact that original sin condemns him to perpetual suffering!"