existence of
God. So you have no belief left, and the century is like an old Sultan
worn out by debauchery! Your Byron, in short, sings of crime and its
emotions in a final despair of poetry."

"Don't you know," replied Bianchon, quite drunk by this time, "that
a dose of phosphorus more or less makes the man of genius or the
scoundrel, a clever man or an idiot, a virtuous person or a criminal?"

"Can any one treat of virtue thus?" cried Cursy. "Virtue, the subject of
every drama at the theatre, the denoument of every play, the foundation
of every court of law...."

"Be quiet, you ass. You are an Achilles for virtue, without his heel,"
said Bixiou.

"Some drink!"

"What will you bet that I will drink a bottle of champagne like a flash,
at one pull?"

"What a flash of wit!"

"Drunk as lords," muttered a young man gravely, trying to give some wine
to his waistcoat.

"Yes, sir; real government is the art of ruling by public opinion."

"Opinion? That is the most vicious jade of all. According to you
moralists and politicians, the laws you set up are always to go before
those of nature, and opinion before conscience. You are right and wrong
both. Suppose society bestows down pillows on us, that benefit is made
up for by the gout; and justice is likewise tempered by red-tape, and
colds accompany cashmere shawls."

"Wretch!" Emile broke in upon the misanthrope, "how can you slander
civilization here at table, up to the eyes in wines and exquisite
dishes? Eat away at that roebuck with the gilded horns and feet, and do
not carp at your mother..."

"Is it any fault of mine if Catholicism puts a million deities in a sack
of flour, that Republics will end in a Napoleon, that monarchy dwells
between the assassination of Henry IV. and the trial of Louis XVI., and
Liberalism produces Lafayettes?"

"Didn't you embrace him in July?"

"No."

"Then hold your tongue, you sceptic."

"Sceptics are the most conscientious of men."

"They have no conscience."

"What are you saying? They have two apiece at least!"

"So you want to discount heaven, a thoroughly commercial notion. Ancient
religions were but the unchecked development of physical pleasure, but
we have developed a soul and expectations; some advance has been made."

"What can you expect, my friends, of a century filled with politics
to repletion?" asked Nathan. "What befell _The History of the King of
Bohemia and his Seven Castles_, a most entrancing concept