a great package from Gouverneur Morris, from Paris. You may
as well hear what news there is. I saw your anxiety, but I was of no
mind to have that imitation Quaker discuss the agony of a great nation."

It took two months or more to hear from France, and each week added to
the gathering anxiety with which De Courval awaited news. He was
grateful for the daily labor, with its steady exactions, which forbade
excessive thought of the home land, for no sagacity of his friend or any
forecast that man could make three thousand miles away was competent to
predict the acts of the sinister historic drama on which the curtain was
rising far away in France.

As the German opened the envelop and set aside letter after letter, he
talked on in his disconnected way. "I could like some bad men more than
Josiah Langstroth. He has what he calls opinions, and will say,
'Welladay,'--no, that is my bastard English,--he will say 'Well, at all
events, that is my opinion.' What means 'all events,' Herr Rene? A kick
would change them. 'T is an event--a kick. And Mistress Wynne is
sometimes not easy to endure. She steps heavily on tender toes, even
when on errands of goodness." The younger man scarce heard these
comments as letter after letter was put aside, until at last he put down
his pipe, and Schmidt said: "I was sorry to keep you, but now this last
letter has it all--all. There is no detail, my friend, but
enough--enough. He writes me all France is in a ferment. This is from
Mr. Morris, whom our mobocrats loathe for an aristocrat. He writes: 'The
King has vetoed two bills, one about the priests and one of less
moment. La Fayette is in disgrace, and wants the surgeon's courage to
let blood. Worst of all, and I write in haste,' he says, 'a mob on June
20th broke into the Tuileries and there, in the OEil de Boeuf, a
butcher mocked the King to his face as Monsieur Veto. The King laughed,
it is said, and set their damned bonnet on his head, and drew his sword,
and cried "_Vive la nation!_" The war goes ill or well as you please;
ill for all, I fear. Dillon was murdered by his own regiment after a
retreat.'"

"I knew him in the army," said De Courval. "I was young then. But the
king--has he no courage? Are they all mad?"

"No. He has not the courage of action. He has the courage to endure, if
that is to be so nominated. The other is needed just now. That is
all--all."

"And too much."

"Yes. Come, let us go out and fence a bit in the gar