are
we to find thirty-nine men equal to you? Or, if we could find them, who
would furnish you with money to pay them?"

"Not bad, Planchet. Ah, the devil! you play the courtier."

"No, monsieur, I speak what I think, and that is exactly why I say that,
in the first pitched battle you fight with your forty men, I am very
much afraid--"

"Therefore I shall fight no pitched battles, my dear Planchet," said the
Gascon, laughing. "We have very fine examples in antiquity of skillful
retreats and marches, which consisted in avoiding the enemy instead of
attacking them. You should know that, Planchet, you who commanded
the Parisians the day on which they ought to have fought against the
musketeers, and who so well calculated marches and countermarches, that
you never left the Palais Royal."

Planchet could not help laughing. "It is plain," replied he, "that if
your forty men conceal themselves, and are not unskillful, they may hope
not to be beaten: but you propose obtaining some result, do you not?"

"No doubt. This, then, in my opinion, is the plan to be proceeded upon
in order quickly to replace his majesty Charles II. on his throne."

"Good!" said Planchet, increasing his attention; "let us see your plan.
But in the first place it seems to me we are forgetting something."

"What is that?"

"We have set aside the nation, which prefers singing merry songs to
psalms, and the army, which we will not fight; but the parliament
remains, and that seldom sings."

"Nor does it fight. How is it, Planchet, that an intelligent man like
yourself should take any heed of a set of brawlers who call themselves
Rumps and Barebones? The parliament does not trouble me at all,
Planchet."

"As soon as it ceases to trouble you, monsieur, let us pass on."

"Yes, and arrive at the result. You remember Cromwell, Planchet?"

"I have heard a great deal of talk about him.

"He was a rough soldier."

"And a terrible eater, moreover."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Why, at one gulp he swallowed all England."

"Well, Planchet, the evening before the day on which he swallowed
England, if any one had swallowed M. Cromwell?"

"Oh, monsieur, it is one of the axioms of mathematics that the container
must be greater than the contained."

"Very well! That is our affair, Planchet."

"But M. Cromwell is dead, and his container is now the tomb."

"My dear Planchet, I see with pleasure that you have not only become a
mathematician, but a ph