Notwithstanding his desire to avoid being entrapped by Florentine cunning, the King, as well as his simple-minded mistress, was by this time caught and carried away in the rhetoric and rhodomontade of this pompous and specious flow of words. The lovers' eyes betrayed how much they were dazzled by the vision of mysterious riches spread out before them; they saw, as it were, subterranean caverns in long perspective full of toiling gnomes. The impatience of curiosity dissipated the alarms of suspicion. "But, then," exclaimed the King, "you are great politicians, and can enlighten us." "No, Sire," said Lorenzo simply. "Why not?" asked the King. "Sire, it is given to no one to be able to predict what will come of a concourse of some thousands of men; we may be able to tell what one man will do, how long he will live, and whether he will be lucky or unlucky; but we cannot tell how several wills thrown together will act, and any calculation of the swing of their interests is even more difficult, for interests are men _plus_ things; only in solitude can we discern the general aspect of the future. The Protestantism that is devouring you will be devoured in its turn by its practical outcome, which, in its day, will become a theory too. Europe, so far, has not gone further than religion; to-morrow it will attack Royalty." "Then the night of Saint-Bartholomew was a great conception?" "Yes, Sire; for when the people triumph, they will have their Saint-Bartholomew. When Religion and Royalty are swept away, the people will attack the great, and after the great they will fall upon the rich. Finally, when Europe is no more than a dismembered herd of men for lack of leaders, it will be swallowed up by vulgar conquerors. The world has presented a similar spectacle twenty times before, and Europe is beginning again. Ideas devour the ages as men are devoured by their passions. When man is cured, human nature will cure itself perhaps. Science is the soul of mankind, and we are its pontiffs; and those who study the soul care but little for the body." "How far have you gone?" asked the King. "We move but slowly; but we never lose what we have once conquered." "So you, in fact, are the King of the Wizards," said Charles IX., piqued at finding himself so small a personage in the presence of this man. The imposing Grand Master of Adepts flashed a look at him that left him thunder-stricken. "You are the King of men," replied he; "I am the King of Ideas. Besides, if there were real wizards, you could not have burned them!" he added, with a touch of irony. "We too have our martyrs."