"What, my fault!" ejaculated the amazed lieutenant. "To be sure. You content yourself with reports and retractations, and such nonsense. Of what consequence are these repulses and contradictions? We must go ahead all the same, and boldly accuse the villains as if we had met no rebuff at all." "What! without proofs?" "Yes, and convict them." "When they have committed no crime?" "Yes, and hang them." "Without judges?" "Yes, a hundred times yes! Without judge or crime or proof! There's no great merit in hanging only those who are really guilty." "But what an outcry of rage there will be against us then!" said Monsieur de Braguelonne. "Ah! that is what I expected you would say," rejoined Démocharès, triumphantly. "That is the very corner-stone of my whole system, Monsieur. For what does this rage of which you speak lead to? Conspiracy. What is the outcome of conspiracy? Revolution. And what is the principal result of revolution? Why, to make your office and mine of very great importance and utility." "To be sure, from that point of view!" said Monsieur de Braguelonne, laughing. "Ah, Monsieur," observed Démocharès, with the air of a master, "remember this principle, 'In order to reap crimes we must first sow them.' Persecution is a very great force." "Well, I must say," rejoined the lieutenant, "that it seems to me we have not been behindhand in that direction since the beginning of this reign. It would be difficult to stir up and provoke the discontented of all sorts more than we have done." "Pshaw! what have we done?" asked the grand inquisitor, scornfully. "Well, in the first place, do you consider the daily domiciliary visits and despoiling of all the Huguenots, innocent or guilty, of no account?" "My faith! yes, I consider them of absolutely no account," was Démocharès's reply; "for you see with what tranquil patience they bear these annoyances, which are altogether too trifling." "And the punishment of Anne Dubourg, nephew of a chancellor of France, who was burned two months since in the Place de Grève,--was that nothing?" "It was a very small thing," said the fastidious De Mouchy. "What was the result of it? The murder of President Minard, one of his judges, and an apocryphal conspiracy of which we never, succeeded in finding any traces. So that was nothing to make a very great amount of talk about." "Well, what do you say to the last edict?" asked Monsieur de Braguelonne,--"the last edict, which strikes, not at the Huguenots alone, but at the whole nobility of the kingdom. For my own part, I said frankly to Monsieur le Cardinal de Lorraine that I thought it went a little too far." "Are you speaking of the ordinance suppressing pensions?" said Démocharès.