While Gerald stood watching, with some curiosity, this strange contrast to the unbroken silence around, a rich deep voice caught his ear, and seemed to awaken within him some singular memory. Where, and when, and how he had heard it before, he knew not; but every accent and every tone struck him as well known.
‘No, no, Mirabeau,’ broke in another; ‘when men throw down their houses, it is not to rebuild them with the old material.’
‘I did not speak of throwing down,’ interposed the same deep voice; ‘I suggested some safe and easy alteration. I would have the doors larger, for easy access; the windows wider, for more light.’
‘And more wood, generally, in the construction, for easy burning, I hope,’ chimed in a third.
‘Make your best provisions for stability: destruction will always be a simple task,’ cried the deep voice. ‘You talk of burning,’ cried he, in a louder tone; ‘what do you mean to do when your fire goes out? materials must fail you at last. What then? You will have heaped many a good and useful thing upon that pile you will live to regret the loss of. What will you do, besides, with those you have taught to dance round these bonfires?’
‘Langeac says it is an experiment we are trying,’ replied another; ‘and, for my part, I am satisfied to accept it as such.’
‘Nay, nay,’ interposed a soft, low voice; ‘I said that untried elements in government are an experiment only warrantable in extreme cases; just as the physician essays even a dangerous remedy, when he deems his patient hopeless.’
‘But it’s your own quackeries here have made all the mischief,’ broke in the deep voice. ‘If the sick man sink, it is yourselves have been the cause.’
‘Was there ever a royal cause that had not its own fatal influences?’ said another.
‘There is an absurd reliance on prestige, a trust in that phantom called Divine right, that blinds men against their better reason. This holiday faith is but a sorry creed in times of trouble.’