"The massacres of September had a good side and a bad side," calmly reiterated the Abbot. "Here is the bad: The most active chiefs in the conspiracy, detained as suspects in the prisons, whence they were carrying on their plots, were killed; the royalists of Paris and the provinces, struck with terror, lay low and ceased their activity. It took three months to knit together all the threads of the conspiracy which had been snapped by the death of its leaders. The September massacres had also the bad aspect for us that they were combined with an outburst of patriotism. The volunteers, flocking in mass to the front, changed entirely by their bedevilled fury the previous tactics of the war. The Prussian infantry, the best in Europe, was overcome by the mad-caps--there is danger lest it may long remain in the panic into which it was thrown by the bayonet charge of the volunteers at the battle of Valmy." "Blue death! my reverend sir, you would best hold your tongue in matters of war, of which you know nothing!" the Count of Plouernel impatiently declared. "I served in the Emigrant corps which stormed the position of Croix-aux-Bois at the battle of Argonne; I was at the side of the Duke of Brunswick in the affray at Valmy; and I say that if the Prussian infantry was beaten down by these bare-feet, who precipitated themselves upon us like savages, it is now recovered from the panic, and asks nothing better than to avenge its disgrace. Yes, and let a war come, a real war, a great war, and the allies will make a butchery of these undisciplined hordes. The Prussians will feed fat their vengeance!" "And I in turn tell you, that in this matter you are completely off your base," was the Abbot's unmoved rejoinder. "By heaven, my reverend sir!" flared back the Count, "measure your terms!" And the giggling Marquis cried, "Plague on it, Abbot, all you need is a switch to give us a flogging! Hi! hi! hi!" "And in your case in particular, Marquis, it would fall where it was deserved. But to continue, I come now to the good, the excellent side of the September massacres." Again the mere mention of such a possibility was more than the Bishop could contain himself under. "It is impossible," he broke in, "to sit still and hear it said in cold blood that that abominable carnage produced any good results."