“I thank you.”
“Ah, you think to incommode me, because you met me in my dress as a workman? do not trouble about that; it is merely one of my disguises; you know my ideas about life being one long masquerade where all are more or less masked. In any case, my dear boy, if ever you want money, out of my private cash box here—for the grand cash box of the Invisibles is in St. Claude Street—come to me at any hour, whether I am at home or not—I showed you the little, side door; push this spring so—“ he showed him the trick—“and you will find about a million ready.”
The round top of the desk opened of itself on the spring being pressed, and displayed a heap of gold coin and bundles of banknotes.
“You are in truth a wonderful man!” exclaimed Gilbert; “but you ought to know that with twenty thousand a-year, I am richer than the King. But do you not fear being disquieted in Paris?”
“On account of the matter of the Queen’s Necklace for which I was forbid the realm? Go to! they dare not. In the present ferment of minds I have only to speak one word to evoke a riot: you forget that I am friendly with all the popular leaders—Lafayette, Necker, Mirabeau and yourself.”
“What have you come to do at Paris?”
“Who knows? perhaps what you went over to the United States to do—found a republic.”
“France has not a republican turn of mind,” said the other, shaking his head.
“We shall teach her that way, that is all. It has taken fifteen hundred years to rule with a monarchy; in one hundred the Republic will be founded to endure—why not as long?”
“The King will resist; the nobility fly to arms; and then what will you do?”