ch of an alteration as any man need submit to for a
period that will pass away so soon.'

'How so, Eugene? you fancy the Republic will not endure in France. What,
then, can replace it?'

'Anything, everything; for the future all is possible. We have
annihilated legitimacy, it is true, just as the Indians destroy a
forest, by burning the trees; but the roots remain; and if the soil is
incapable of sending up the giant stems as before, it is equally unable
to furnish a new and different culture. Monarchy is just as firmly
rooted in a Frenchman's heart, but he will have neither patience for its
tedious growth, nor can he submit to restore what has cost him so dearly
to destroy. The consequences will, therefore, be a long and continued
struggle between parties, each imposing upon the nation the form, of
government that pleases it in turn. Meanwhile you and I, and others like
us, must serve whatever is uppermost--the cleverest fellow he who sees
the coming change, and prepares to take advantage of it.'

'Then you are a Royalist?' asked I.

'A Royalist! What! stand by a monarch who deserted his aristocracy,
and forgot his own order; defend a throne that he had reduced to the
condition of a _fauteuil de Bourgeois?_'

'You are then for the Republic?'

'For what robbed me of my inheritance--what degraded me from my rank,
and reduced me to a state below that of my own vassals! Is this a cause
to uphold?'

'You are satisfied with military glory, perhaps,' said I, scarcely
knowing what form of faith to attribute to him.

'In an army where my superiors are the very dregs of the people; where
the canaille have the command, and the chivalry of France is represented
by a sans-culotte!'

'The cause of the Church----'

A hurst of ribald laughter cut me short, and laying his hand on my
shoulder he looked me full in the face; while with a struggle to recover
his gravity, he said--

'I hope, my dear Maurice, you are not serious, and that you do not mean
this for earnest. Why, my dear boy, don't you talk of the Eleusinian
Mysteries, the Delphic Oracle of Alchemy, Astrology--of anything, in
short, of which the world, having amused itself, has at length grown
weary? Can't you see that the Church has passed away, and these good
priests have gone the same road as their predecessors? Is any acuteness
wanting to show that there is an end of this superstition that has
enthralled men's minds for a couple of thousand years? No, no, thei