"Ay, to banish, to perpetually imprison, all except death, because, guilty in the result, he was not so in the intention. You judge him from the people's standing, Billet; but he acted like the son of kings. Was he a tyrant, as you call him? No. An oppressor of the people? No. An accomplice of aristocrats and an enemy of freedom? No."
"Then you judge him as royalty would?"
"No; for then he would have been acquitted."
"But you did so by voting for his life."
"No; with life imprisonment. Granting he was not your neighbor, but your enemy, he was a vanquished one, and ought not to have been slain in cold blood. That is not execution, but immolation. You have conferred on royalty something like martyrdom, and made justice seem vengeance. Take care! In doing too much, you have not done enough. Charles of England was executed, but his son reigned. But James II. was banished, and his sons died in exile. Human nature is humane, and you have alienated from the Republic for fifty or a hundred years the immense proportion of the population judging revolutions by their feelings. Believe me, my friend, Republicans ought most to bewail the death of Louis, for the blood will fall on them, and cost the Republic its life."
"There is some truth in what you say, Gilbert," said a voice at the door.
"Cagliostro!" exclaimed both debaters, turning with the same impulse.
"Yes; but there is also truth in what Billet said."
"That is the trouble in it," sighed Gilbert; "the cause we plead has two faces, and each, as he looks upon it, can say he is right."