"Count the old men, too, for they who have no strength to swing the sabre, serve as buckler for the active fighters. At the taking of the Bastile old men were on hand: they stood so that the younger ones could rest their guns on their shoulder so that the balls of your Switzers might be buried in the useless old body, the rampart of the able man. Include them among your foes, for they have been relating in the chimney corner for ever so many years, what affronts their mothers endured, the poverty of the estates over which the nobles hunted, the shame of their caste humbled under feudal privileges. When the sons took up the gun, they found it loaded with the curses of the aged as well as with powder and shot. In Paris now, women and children as well as the men are cheering for liberty and independence. Count them all as eight hundred thousand warriors."
"Three hundred Spartans vanquished Xerxes' army," retorted the Queen.
"Yes, but the Spartans are nearly a million and it is your army that is Xerxes."
"Oh, I would rather be hurled from the throne," she cried, as she rose with clenched fists and face flaming with shame and ire, "I would rather your Parisians hewed me to pieces, than hear from a Charny, one of my supporters, such speech as this!"
"Charny would not so address your Majesty unless every drop of blood in his veins were worthy of his sires and given to you."
"Then let us march upon Paris and let us die together!"
"Shamefully, without any battle," said the noble. "We shall not fight but disappear entirely like Philistines. March on Paris? when, as soon as we enter within her walls, all the houses will tumble down upon us, like the Red Sea waves overwhelming Pharaoh, and you will leave a cursed name, and your children will be hunted down like wolf-cubs."
"How must I fall, pray tell me, count?" demanded the sovereign haughtily; "teach me."
"As a victim," was the answer, "like a Christian queen, smiling and forgiving those who strike you. If I had five hundred thousand like myself, I might say, Let us have at them this night, and to-morrow you would sleep in the Tuileries, the throne conquered!"
"Woe is me! you despair on whom was set my final hope."