Louis XVI was not utterly lacking in sense; his first resentment past, he admitted to himself that the conduct of this municipal officer was all the more praiseworthy, inasmuch as while declaring himself a revolutionist and a republican, he nevertheless treated a captive King with respect. "I was rude just now, I am sorry for it," he said at length. "Hoping for a moment to discover in you a faithful subject, I found myself face to face with an enemy. The disappointment was great. Still, let us talk a little on this subject of your hatred for royalty. What harm have this royalty, this nobility, this clergy, against which you rail, done to you and your like?" "I could, Sire, reply to you in a few words, by facts and not by railings. But I wish not to wound your preconceived ideas, and above all to avoid giving you cause to make a sad comparison. This, Sire, is the third time, in the course of fourteen centuries, that a descendant of my family encounters one of the heirs of the monarchy of Clovis; and that under circumstances--" "Doubtless the circumstances were intensely interesting. What were they? You pique my curiosity." "Sire, the circumstances are sinister. It would be painful to me to give you cause to draw the sad comparison between your present position and that of the princes, your predecessors." "Tell me that part of your legends, Monsieur Lebrenn. My curiosity is highly excited, and my confidence in a brighter future will not be dimmed by your recital." "To obey you, Sire, I shall. It was in the year 738 that one of my ancestors, named Amael, a soldier of fortune and companion to Charles Martel, found himself in Anjou, at the Convent of St. Saturnine. My ancestor was commissioned by Charles Martel to keep prisoner in the convent a poor boy of nine, the only son of Thierry IV, the do-nothing King, named Childeric. The child soon died, thus extinguishing, in the last scion of the Merovingians, the stock of Clovis who had covered Gaul with ruins.[11] Two centuries and a half later, in 987, at the palace of Compiegne, another of my ancestors, the son of a forester of the royal domain, found himself alone in the chamber of Louis the Do-nothing with that prince; he saw him of a sudden faint, become deadly pale, and writhe in agony. He apostrophized the dying King thus: 'Louis, last year Hugh the Capet, Count of Paris, had your father Lothaire poisoned by the Queen his wife, a concubine of the Bishop of Laon. Louis, you are about to die of poison which your wife, Queen Blanche, has just given you. She has promised Hugh the Capet, her accomplice, to wed him during the coming year.' And so it was; the last of the Carlovingians dead, Hugh the Capet espoused his widow and had himself enthroned King of France.[12] There, Sire, that is how royal dynasties are founded and ended."