They walked on in silence for a little, their footsteps echoing in the deserted street, the icy wind cold on their faces, the sun fierce overhead. Even Armand, untouched by the pest, by labours for the stricken, or, apparently, by apprehension, looked ill, though he was jauntily dressed in the new spring fashions, in a peacock-blue coat with olive-green collar, a flowered waistcoat and white cashmere trousers. The sight of a man hurrying past them, holding an onion to his nose, struck him into speech again.
"Heavens!" he exclaimed, "I had really rather have the cholera than carry about a raw onion. You do not carry anything, I notice, Prosper; not, I dare say, that it is much good.—By the way, I have long been wanting to tell you that I regard you as the bravest man I know, and if (as is probable) you have heard me say anything uncomplimentary about priests I beg you will consider it unsaid. I am really proud to be your kinsman.... Don't spoil it by saying that you are only doing your duty, or tell me that the Archbishop of Paris has come out of hiding and the Archbishop of Besançon returned from Rome to do the same as you are doing, for I do not believe that even his Eminence of Rohan dislikes it as much as you. Mort de ma vie, but you must have seen some horrible things lately!"
"The worst thing that I have seen," said Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon sadly, "was not the visitation of the plague, but the outburst of the vile passions of men, excited by fear, and played upon by the unscrupulous."
"You mean the murders, at the beginning of the outbreak, due to the report that it was caused by poison? But what can you expect? There was a man hanged on a lamp-post, as in the good old times, in one of those very streets, for the same reason. And the Republican newspapers have proclaimed that even the cholera is a scourge less cruel than the government of Louis-Philippe. You remember how the Duc d'Orléans went with the late Casimir Périer to the Hôtel-Dieu to visit the sick? Well, they said that Louis-Philippe had sent his son there to gloat over the misery of the people, and that the people would return his visit ... after the manner of the Tenth of August and the Twenty-ninth of July!"
The young man's tone was not free from satisfaction. The priest, aware of the alliance between a certain section of the Legitimists and the Extreme Left, turned and looked at him.
"I hope," he said sternly, "that Madame's party does not stain their cause by using such weapons."
"We have no need," returned Armand with an air. "You will soon see the gleam of the noblest weapon of all—the sword."
"The sword, so be it!" said Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon. "But not the dagger—not another conspiracy of the Rue des Prouvaires, I trust."
They had come to the Place St. Sulpice, and stopped.
"You speak as if I had been implicated in that," said his cousin, rather aggrieved. "Or as if I were M. de Berthier, who tried to run over the King and Queen. No, I am for a stroke of a different kind. Wait a little, a very little, Prosper, and you will see the South in flames for Marie-Caroline, and then the West, Brittany, and Vendée..."