INCOGNITO (dejectedly).--"I cannot deny the soundness of your advice, though in accepting it I feel unutterably saddened. Still you, the calmest and shrewdest observer among my friends, think there is cause for hope, not despair. Victor, I have more than most men to make life pleasant, but I would lay down life at this moment with you. You know me well enough to be sure that I utter no melodramatic fiction when I say that I love my country as a young man loves the ideal of his dreams--with my whole mind and heart and soul! and the thought that I cannot now aid her in the hour of her mortal trial is--is--" The man's voice broke down, and he turned aside, veiling his face with a hand that trembled. DE MAULEON--"Courage--patience! All Frenchmen have the first; set them an example they much need in the second. I, too, love my country, though I owe to it little enough, heaven knows. I suppose love of country is inherent in all who are not Internationalists. They profess only to love humanity, by which, if they mean anything practical, they mean a rise in wages." INCOGNITO (rousing himself, and with a half smile). "Always cynical, Victor--always belying yourself. But now that you have advised my course, what will be your own? Accompany me, and wait for better times." "No, noble friend; our positions are different. Yours is made--mine yet to make. But for this war I think I could have secured a seat in the Chamber. As I wrote you, I found that my kinsfolk were of much influence in their department, and that my restitution to my social grade, and the repute I had made as an Orleanist, inclined them to forget my youthful errors and to assist my career. But the Chamber ceases to exist. My journal I shall drop. I cannot support the Government; it is not a moment to oppose it. My prudent course is silence." INCOGNITO.--"But is not your journal essential to your support?" DE MAULEON.--"Fortunately not. Its profits enabled me to lay by for the rainy day that has come; and having reimbursed you and all friends the sums necessary to start it, I stand clear of all debt, and, for my slender wants, a rich man. If I continued the journal I should be beggared; for there would be no readers to Common Sense in this interval of lunacy. Nevertheless, during this interval, I trust to other ways for winning a name that will open my rightful path of ambition whenever we again have a legislature in which Common Sense can be heard." INCOGNITO.--"But how win that name, silenced as a writer?" DE MAULEON.--"You forget that I have fought in Algeria. In a few days Paris will be in a state of siege; and then--and then," he added, and very quietly dilated on the renown of a patriot or the grave of a soldier.