"You could not have chosen your refuge worse! I am glad to be able to warn you of your danger. At No. 17 of that same street live two members of the Lebrenn family, John the iron-worker, and that beautiful woman whom you knew under the name of Marchioness Aldini. Be on your guard, for if these people came to know where you were hidden, they would not let slip the opportunity to wreak on you the hate with which they have pursued your family for so many centuries." "Now that that fool of a Marquis has become almost reasonable, let us resume the course of our deliberation," replied the Count, thanking Morlet for his information; and addressing Hubert: "When you came in, the priest was having the presumption to propose for our consideration the question whether it would not be wiser to postpone the projected stroke until after the King was sentenced, instead of to-morrow, as we purpose." "Any such delay would be all the sadder seeing that this very evening a case of arms, containing also several copies of our proclamation, was seized in my brother-in-law's house. The Committee of General Safety thus has by this time the most flagrant proof of a conspiracy. So then, I say, we must make haste. Yesterday and day before I saw several officers and grenadiers of my old battalion, who are very influential in their quarter. They await but the signal to run to arms. The bourgeoisie has a horror of the Republic." "Confess, Monsieur Hubert, that it would be better for the bourgeoisie to resign itself to what it calls 'the privileges of the throne, the immunities of the nobility and clergy,' than to submit to the tyranny of the populace," rejoined Plouernel. "Monsieur Count, a few years ago you administered through the cudgels of your lackeys a good dressing down to a man whom I have the unhappiness to possess for brother-in-law. I, in his place, would have paid you back, not by proxy, through hirelings, but in person. Now, great seigneur that you are, what would you have done in that case?" "Eh! My God, my poor Monsieur Hubert! If I did not, in the first moment of anger, run you through the body with my sword, I would have been under the obligation of asking for a lettre de cachet and sending you to the Bastille." "Because a man of your birth could not consent to fight a bourgeois?" "Certainly; for the tribunal composed of our seigneurs the Marshals of France, to which the nobility refers its affairs of honor, would have formally prohibited the duel; and we are bound by oath to respect the decisions of Messieurs the Marshals. For the common herd we have nothing but contempt." "It seems to me we are wandering singularly astray from the question at stake," interposed the Bishop. "Let us come back to it."