Alexandre Dumas

“ Go to! they dare not. In the present ferment of minds I have only to speak one word to evoke a riot: you forget that I am friendly with all the popular leaders—Lafayette, Necker, Mirabeau and yourself.”
“What have you come to do at Paris?”
“Who knows? perhaps what you went over to the United States to do—found a republic.”
“France has not a republican turn of mind,” said the other, shaking his head.
“We shall teach her that way, that is all. It has taken fifteen hundred years to rule with a monarchy; in one hundred the Republic will be founded to endure—why not as long?” ”

“ He had scarcely finished the words before a heart-rending scream was heard. The Queen had been attracted to the group of which the King and his corrected sketch were the centre. She beheld the same instrument which had been presented her in its likeness in a glass of water by Balsamo the Magician twenty years before!
At the view she had no strength to do more than scream, and life abandoning her as though she were under the blade, she swooned in the arms of Dr. Gilbert. ”

“ This traitor is the best of Frenchmen.”
“Oh,” thundered the priest, “that ever I should believe that the royal authority should sink so low that a goodfornothing of this sort invokes Lafayette as once they called on Aristides.”
“Lucky for you the people do not hear you,” said Pitou.
“Oho, you reveal yourself now in your true colors,” said the priest triumphantly: “you bully me. The people, those who cut the throats of the royal bodyguard; who trample on the fallen, the people of your Baillys, Lafayettes and Pitous. Why do you not denounce me to the people of Villers Cotterets? ”

“ What would Father Billet say if he knew how his friends are thus cast off, and his business neglected? What would he say if he heard that, instead of looking after the working people, his daughter goes to keep appointments with the aristocrat, Lord Charny? He would not say much, but he would kill her. It is something to have the means of revenge in one’s hand,” thought Pitou.
But it is grander not to use them.
Still, Pitou had learnt that there is no benefit in doing good unless the actions are known to the person befriended.
Would it be possible to let Catherine know that he was helping her? ”

“ Why should an ugly, uncouth bear like him inspire amorous sentiments in a pretty girl, when a handsome young nobleman—a very peacock beside him—was there to glitter and enchant?
He reasoned that, dazzled by Charny’s brilliancy, she would not see Pitou’s real value if he acted harshly towards her. Consequently, he ought to behave nicely to her.
The good soul, heated white hot by wine and love, vowed to make Catherine ashamed of having scorned the affection of such a sterling lover as he was. ”

“ I am now Baron Zanone, a Genoese banker. I discount the paper of princes—good paper in the sort of Cardinal Prince Rohan’s, you know. But I am not lending money merely for the interest. By the way, if you need cash, my dear Gilbert, say so? You know that my purse, like my heart, is always at your call.”
“I thank you.”
“Ah, you think to incommode me, because you met me in my dress as a workman? do not trouble about that; it is merely one of my disguises; you know my ideas about life being one long masquerade where all are more or less masked. ”

“ Charny smiled bitterly.
“I understand that smile and that you say, inwardly, the Queen was unjust at Versailles and is capricious here.”
“Injustice or caprice, a woman is allowed anything,” returned Charny: “a queen more than all.”
“Whatever the caprice, my friend,” said Marie with all the witchingness she could put in a voice or smile, “the Queen cannot do without you as adviser or the woman without you as loved friend.” ”

“ I will show you up, sirrah! as a failure as a scholar, as a Latinist full of barbarisms, and as a beggar who comes preaching subversive doctrines in order to prey upon your clients.”
“I do not prey upon anybody—it is not by preying I live but by work: and as for lowering me in the eyes of my fellow-citizens, know that I have been elected by them commander of the National Guards of Haramont.”
“National Guards at Haramont? and you, Pitou, the captain? Abomination of desolation! Such gangs as you would be chief of must be robbers, footpads, bandits, and highwaymen.” ”

“ Gilbert. Gilbert, you see Marquis Favras, one of my clients. Marquis, will you kindly step into my sitting-room,” continued he as the two saluted each other, “and wait for a few seconds when I shall be with you.”
“Well?” queried Gilbert as the marquis bowed again and went into the parlor.
“You wished to know in what way this gentleman would die?” said Cagliostro with an odd smile; “have you ever seen a nobleman hanged?”
“Noblemen are privileged not to die by hanging.”
“Then it will be the more curious sight; be on the Strand when the Marquis of Favras is executed.” ”

“ As if God moulded all men in the same form, and as if the circle enlarged for a great mind should not enclose greater vices. Mirabeau will not be Premier because he owes a hundred thousand francs debt, which would be settled were he a rich contractor’s son, and because he is condemned to death for having run away with an old imbecile’s wife—who smothered herself in charcoal fumes for the love of a strapping military captain! ”

“ For her the Americanized Gilbert, the friend of Washington and Lafayette, aristocratic through study, science and genius, was still the hangdog Gilbert of her father’s manor house, and the gardener’s boy of Trianon Palace.
Gilbert no longer bore her the ardent love which had driven him to crime in his youth, but the deep and tender affection, spite of her insults and persecutions, of a man ready to do a service at risk of his life. ”

“ The Queen eyed him with astonishment for she did not understand.
“Fine words,” she sneered. “I thought you philosophers had run them down to dust.”
“No, great deeds have killed them,” returned Gilbert. “Whither tends old France? to the unity of the country. There are no longer provinces, but all French.”
“What are you driving at? that your united thirty millions of rebels should form a universal federation against their King and Queen?”
“Do not deceive yourself: it is not the people who are rebels but the rulers who have rebelled against them. ”

“ But on seeing the reason, he and Catherine appealed to the farmer with the same voice.
Untouched, the latter carried the prize up to the altar where he let him fall.
“I proclaim you unworthy to serve at this altar which you disdained,” said Billet: “no man should go up these steps unless his head is filled with these feelings, the desire of liberty, devotion to the country and love of mankind. Priest, have you these sentiments? if so, go up boldly and invoke our Maker. But if you do not feel you are the foremost of us all as a citizen, give place to the more worthy, and be off!” ”

“ Farewell, count: we shall meet in the action: perhaps we shall sleep side by side on the battlefield.”
“Come, come, it is written that man shall not elude his doom however keen-witted he may be,” muttered the magician: “I sought you out to tell you what I said, and you have heard it. Like Cassandra’s prediction it is useless, but remember that Cassandra was correct. Fare thee well!”
“Speak frankly, count,” said Gilbert, stopping on the threshold to gaze fixedly at the speaker, “do you here, as in America, pretend to make folk believe that you can read the future?” ”

“ I gave her my word to respect her, and this is true, eh?”
“I swear it, on my little Toussaint,” said Oliva-Nicole.
“So you believe that I will pay the sum mentioned on the day when the King shall have been abducted or Marquis Favras arrested, to say nothing of my serving the running knot strangling him a while ago. For this affair, at all events, there shall be no halter or gibbet, for I cannot bind myself any farther. You understand: The man who is born to be—ahem!”
“My lord, it is as if the courts had awarded us the money,” said the woman. ”

“ I am not fitted to live in society, and in solitude I have found repose if not happiness. My happiest days were those spent as a girl at Taverney and in the convent of St. Denis with the noble princess of the House of France, the Lady Louise. But, with your lordship’s permission, I will dwell in this summerhouse, full of recollections which are not without some sweetness spite of their sadness.”
Charny bowed at this suggestion of his permission being sought, like a man who was obeying an order, far more than granting a request. ”

“ If you will believe me, captain—you understand that a friend is giving advice—you will take no part in it for the peers or the people. Better act for yourself.”
“Certainly, for yourself,” said Nicole. “Blest if you have not toiled long enough for others: so that it is high time you looked after Number One.”
“You hear the lady, who speaks like a born orator. Bear this in mind, Friend Beausire, all spec’s have a good and a bad side, one for the winners, one for the losers: no affair however good, can benefit everybody; the whole trouble is to hit on the right side.” ”

“ Her hearer turned visibly paler. Seeing her totter and close her eyes from losing strength, the Queen moved to support her but she resisted and stood steady.
“If your Majesty had pity on your faithful servant, you would spare her memories which she had almost banished from her: she is a poor comforter who seeks comfort from nobody, not even heaven, from doubt that even heaven hath power to console certain sorrows.”
“Then you have others to tell of than what you have entrusted to me? the time has come for you to explain, and that is why I sent for you. You love Count Charny?” ”

“ In your despair you have not gone into the nunnery at the age of twenty-five, trying to quiet at the cold crucifix your scorching love: then, one day when you hoped to have damped with tears if not extinguished the flame consuming you, you have not had this rival, once your friend, come to you in the name of the former friendship to ask you to be the wife of this very man whom you had worshipped for three years—for the sake of her salvation as a wife, her royal Majesty endangered——! ”

“ We have the King of Denmark, who began by killing his doctor Struensee, and who, at seventeen, the precocious philosopher, said: ‘Voltaire made a man of me for he taught me to think.’ We have the Empress Catherine, who made such giant strides in philosophy that—while she dismembered Poland, Voltaire wrote to her: ‘Diderot, Alembert and myself are raising altars to you. We have the Queen of Sweden and many princes in the Empire and throughout Germany.'”
“You have nothing left you but to convert the Pope, my dear master, and I hope you will, as nothing is beyond you.” ”

“ A carriage was waiting for her, for a servant was holding the door open. She stepped in swiftly and took her seat.
Before the door could be closed, Sebastian glided in between it and the footman, and seizing the hem of her dress, kissed with frenzy and cried:
“Oh, lady!”
Looking at the pretty boy who had frightened her at first, she said in a sweeter voice than she usually spoke, though it was yet shaken with fear and emotion:
“Well, my little friend, why are you running after me? why do you call me? what do you want?” ”

“ Then, as though she dreaded someone coming to snatch away this child whom she had found, she drew him entirely into the vehicle, pushed him to its other side, shut the door with her own hand, and lowering the glass to order: “Drive to No. 9 Coq-Heron Street, the first carriage-doorway from Plastriere Street,” she shut the window instantly.
Turning to the boy she asked his name.
“Sebastian? come, Sebastian, come here, on my heart.”
She threw herself back as if going to swoon, muttering: “What new sensation is this? can it be what is called happiness?” ”