"Well!" replied the handsome young man to whom this social sally was addressed, with his witty smile, and who was none other than Benjamin Constant, "you would be wrong, for you would choose Athens in her decline, and not at her rise." "Her decline? With Pericles? It seems to me that on the contrary I choose her in all her splendor." "Yes; but, madame, nothing begins with splendor. Splendor is the fruit which is preceded by the buds, the flowers, and the leaves. You will have none of Pisistratus, and you are wrong. It was he who, in placing himself at the head of the poorer classes, prepared the future greatness of Athens. As for his two sons, Hipparchus and Hippias, I abandon them to you. But Aclysthenes, who increased the number of senators to five hundred, as our Convention has just done, began the period of the great Persian wars. Miltiades defeated the Persians at Marathon; Pichegru has just conquered the Prussians and the Austrians. Themistocles destroyed the Persian fleet at Salamis; Moreau has just captured the Dutch fleet by a cavalry charge. It is even more original. The liberty of Greece sprang from the very wars which seemed to threaten her with inevitable destruction, as ours has from our war with foreign powers. Then it was that the privileges were extended; then it was that the archons and magistrates were chosen from all classes irrespective of degree. Moreover, you forget that Æschylus was born during this fertile period. Illuminated by the unconscious divination of power, he created the character of Prometheus; or, in other words, the revolt of man against tyranny--Æschylus, the younger brother of Homer, who seems nevertheless the elder." "Bravo! bravo!" said a voice. "You are strong in literature, upon my word. But in the meantime they are cutting one another's throats in the Section Le Peletier and the Quartier Feydeau. There, just hear the bells! They have returned from Rome." "Ah! is it you, Barbé-Marbois," said Madame de Staël, addressing a man in the forties, very handsome, but with the pomposity and vapidity which is so often met with in palaces and among diplomats--a very honest man for all that, and the son-in-law of William Moore, the president and governor of Pennsylvania. "Where do you come from?" "Straight from the Convention." "And what are they doing there?" "Arguing. They have outlawed the Sectionists and are arming the patriots. As for the Sectionists, they have already found the bells, which proves that they are monarchists in disguise. To-morrow they will find their guns, and then there will be a fine rumpus."