"Too slowly, since swords and pikes have to be supplementing its blade," said Gilbert.
"Listen," said Cagliostro; "you must grant that we have a most block-headed crew to deal with. We gave the aristocrats, the court, and the monarchs all sorts of warnings without their profiting or being advised by them. We took the Bastile, their persons from Versailles, their palace in Paris; we shut up their king in the temple, and the aristocrats in the other prisons; and all serves for no end. The king, under lock and bolt, rejoices at the Prussians taking his towns, and the lords in the abbey cheer the Germans. They drink wine under the noses of poor people who can not get wholesome water, and eat truffle pies before beggars who can not get bread. On King Wilhelm of Prussia being notified that if he passes Longwy into French territory, as it will be the warrant for the king's death, he replies: 'However imbittered may be the fate of the royal family, our armies must not retrograde. I hope with all my heart to arrive in time to save the King of France, but my duty before all is to save Europe.' And he marches forward to Verdun. It is fairly time to end this nonsense."
"End with whom?" cried Gilbert.
"With the king, the queen, and their following."
"Would you murder a king and a queen?"
"Oh, no; that would be a bad blunder. They must be publicly tried, condemned, and executed, as we have the example set by the execution of Charles I. But, one way or another, doctor, we must get rid of them, and the sooner the better."
"Who has decided this?" protested Gilbert. "Let me hear. Is it the intelligence, the honor, and the conscience of the people of whom you speak? When genius, loyalty, and justice were represented by Mirabeau, Lafayette, and Vergniaud, if you had said 'Louis must die,' in the name of those three I should still have shuddered, but I should doubt. In whose name do you pronounce now? Hissed actors, paltry editors, hot-heads like Marat, who have to be bled to cool them when they shriek for thousands of heads. Leave these failures who think they are wonders because they can undo in a stroke the work which it has taken nature a few score years, for they are villains, master, and you ought not to associate with such burlesques of men."
"My dear Gilbert, you are mistaken again," said the prime mover; "they are not villains; you misuse the word. They are mere instruments."
"Of destruction."
"Ay; but for the benefit of an idea. The enfranchisement of the people, Gilbert; liberty, the Republic—not merely French—God forbid me having so selfish an idea! but universal, the federation of the free world. No, these men have not genius, or honor, or conscience, but something stronger, more inexorable, less resistible—they have instinct."