"There must be an enemy somewhere," suggested Willis.
"The difficulty does not, however, lie there," observed Jack; "for, if we have no enemies, it is easy enough to make them."
"There must, at all events, be armies, magazines, and a treasury—or eggs, as the great commander in question hinted."
"True," replied Fritz; "but there is the same difficulty as regards all professions; there can be no barristers without briefs, no physicians without patients."
"You will admit, however, that clients and patients are not so rare as hundreds of thousands of armed men and millions of money."
"Brother," said Jack, "your cavalry are routed and your infantry outflanked."
"If you are determined to be a conqueror, let it be by the pen rather than by the sword—or, what do you say to oratory? It is not easier, perhaps, but, at all events, eloquence is not denied to ordinary mortals. You will not then, to be sure, rank with the Hannibals, the Tamerlanes, or the Cæsars; but you may attain a place with Demosthenes, who was more dreaded by Philip of Macedon than an army of soldiers."
"Or Cicero," remarked Becker, "who preserved his country from the rapacity of Cataline."
"Or Peter the Hermit," remarked Frank, "who by his eloquence roused Europe against the Saracens."
"Or Bossuet," added Wolston, "and then you may venture to assert in the face of kings that God alone is Great, should they, like Louis XIV., assume the sun as an emblem, and adopt such a silly scroll as 'Nec pluribus impar.'"