"
"Crass idiots!" replied the Republican, "you are for setting a nation
straight with toothpicks. To your way of thinking, justice is more
dangerous than thieves."
"Oh, dear!" cried the attorney Deroches.
"Aren't they a bore with their politics!" said the notary Cardot.
"Shut up. That's enough of it. There is no knowledge nor virtue worth
shedding a drop of blood for. If Truth were brought into liquidation,
we might find her insolvent."
"It would be much less trouble, no doubt, to amuse ourselves with
evil, rather than dispute about good. Moreover, I would give all the
speeches made for forty years past at the Tribune for a trout, for one
of Perrault's tales or Charlet's sketches."
"Quite right! . . . Hand me the asparagus. Because, after all, liberty
begets anarchy, anarchy leads to despotism, and despotism back again
to liberty. Millions have died without securing a triumph for any one
system. Is not that the vicious circle in which the whole moral world
revolves? Man believes that he has reached perfection, when in fact he
has but rearranged matters."
"Oh! oh!" cried Cursy, the _vaudevilliste_; "in that case, gentlemen,
here's to Charles X., the father of liberty."
"Why not?" asked Emile.
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