nning to compromise his party by
his violent language, which was too extravagant to be sincere.

Elbows on knees and head on fist, she sat buried in thought; then
turning to her old lover sitting on the palliasse, she asked:

"What do you think of it all, Maurice?"

"I think these good gentry give a philosopher and an amateur of the
shows of life abundant matter for reflection and amusement; but that it
would be better for you, my dear, if you were out of France."

"Maurice, where will it land us?"

"That is what you asked me, Louise, one day we were driving on the banks
of the Cher, on the road to Les Ilettes; the horse, you remember, had
taken the bit in his teeth and was galloping off with us at a frantic
pace. How inquisitive women are! to-day, for the second time, you want
to know where we are going to. Ask the fortune-tellers. I am not a
wizard, sweetheart. And philosophy, even the soundest, is of small help
for revealing the future. These things will have an end; everything has.
One may foresee divers issues. The triumph of the Coalition and the
entry of the allies into Paris. They are not far off; yet I doubt if
they will get there. These soldiers of the Republic take their beatings
with a zest nothing can extinguish. It may be Robespierre will marry
Madame Royale and have himself proclaimed Protector of the Kingdom
during the minority of Louis XVII."

"You think so!" exclaimed the _citoyenne_, agog to have a hand in so
promising an intrigue.

"Again it may be," Brotteaux went on, "that La Vendee will win the day
and the rule of the priests be set up again over heaps of ruins and
piles of corpses. You cannot conceive, dear heart, the empire the clergy
still wields over the masses of the foolish,... I beg pardon, I meant to
say,--of 'the Faithful'; it was a slip of the tongue. The most likely
thing, in my poor opinion, is that the Revolutionary Tribunal will bring
about the destruction of the regime it has established; it is a menace
over too many heads. Those it terrifies are without number; they will
unite together, and to destroy it they will destroy the whole system of
government. I think you have got our young friend Gamelin posted to this
court. He is virtuous; he will be implacable. The more I think of it,
fair friend, the more convinced I am that this Tribunal, set up to save
the Republic, will destroy it. The Convention has resolved to have, like
Royalty, its _Grands Jours_,[5] its _Chambre Ardent