"You'll make them hesitate about this wedding if you talk like that," said M. Mauperin.
"Oh, if my husband begins with his gloomy ideas, if he's going to talk about the end of the world—" put in Mme. Bourjot.
"I congratulate you that you don't feel the anxiety I do," remarked M. Bourjot, bowing to his wife; "but I can assure you that, without being weak-minded, there is every reason for feeling very uneasy."
"Certainly, certainly," said Denoisel. "I think that money is in danger, in great danger, in very great danger indeed. In the first place, it is threatened by that envy which is at the bottom of nearly all revolutions; and then by progress, which baptizes the revolutions."
"But, sir, such progress would be infamous. Take me, for instance: no one could doubt me. I used to be a Liberal—I am now, in fact. I am a soldier of Liberty, a born Republican; I am for progress of every kind. But a revolution against wealth—why, it would be barbarous! We should be going back to savage times. What we want is justice and common sense. Can you imagine now a society without wealth?"
"No, not any more than a greasy pole without a silver cup."
"What," continued M. Bourjot, who in his excitement had not caught Denoisel's words, "the money that I have earned with hard work, honestly and with the greatest difficulty—the money that is mine, that I have made, and which is for my children—why, there is nothing more sacred! I even look upon the income-tax as a violation of property."
"Why, yes," said Denoisel in the most perfectly good-natured tone, "I am quite of your opinion. And I should be very sorry," he added wickedly, "to make things seem blacker to you than they already do. But you see we have had a revolution against the nobility; we shall have one against wealth. Great names have been abolished by the guillotine, and great fortunes will be done away with next. A man was considered guilty if his name happened to be M. de Montmorency; it will be criminal to be M. Two Thousand Pounds a Year. Things are certainly getting on. I can speak all the more freely as I am absolutely disinterested, myself. I should not have had anything to be guillotined for in the old days, and I haven't enough to be ruined for nowadays. So, you see——"
"Excuse me," put in M. Bourjot, solemnly, "but your comparison—no one could deplore excesses more than I do, and the event of 1793 was a great crime, sir. The nobility were treated abominably, and all honest people must be of the same opinion as I am."
M. Mauperin smiled as he thought of the Bourjot of 1822.