"
"It must be for a season yet," answered the other, with loud,
rasping voice; "but the day of a rising is at hand, and shows with a
laughing face how those whom she will destroy are rushing swiftly
upon their own doom."
"What nonsense is that you are talking?" asked the cobbler. "Those
who are going to be destroyed by Madame Liberty are working out
their own ruin?"
"And yet they are doing it, Master Simon; they are digging their own
graves, only they do not see it, and do not know it; for the
divinity which means to destroy them has smitten them with
blindness. There is this queen, this Austrian woman. Do you not see
with your wise eyes how like a busy spider she is weaving her own
shroud?"
"Now, that is certainly an error," said Simon; "the queen does not
work at all. She lets the people work for her."
"I tell you, man, she does work, she is working at her own shroud,
and I think she has got a good bit of it ready. She has nice
friends, too, to help her in it, and to draw up the threads for this
royal spider, and so get ready what is needed for this shroud.
There, for example, is that fine Duke de Coigny. Do you know who
that Duke de Coigny is?"
"No, indeed, I know nothing about it; I have nothing to do with the
court, and know nothing about the court rabble."
"There you are right, they are a rabble," cried the other, laughing
in return.
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