"Am I not always your own, dearest?" was the fond reply.
"But during the week past, I might almost say during the month past, you have been compelled to be so often absent from me."
"Ah! love, you know I was not willingly absent!" was the quick answer.
"No—no—no—but it was hardly the more endurable for that," said the lady, with a smile. "Oh! the anxiety of the last three days and nights! Dearest, I do believe I have not slept three hours during the whole of those three days and nights!"
"And I, dear, have slept not one!" was the laughing rejoinder.
"But all is over now, is it not?"
"In one sense all is over, and in another all now begins. The monarchy is ended in France, I believe, forever. The Republic has begun, and, I trust, will prove lasting."
"And all the grand objects for which you have been striving with your noble colleagues for years and years are at length accomplished, are they not?"
"That is a question, love, not easily answered. That the cause of man and France has wonderfully triumphed during the past three days is, no doubt, most true. But this victory, love, I foresaw. Indeed, it was but the inevitable result of an irresistible cause. It was neither chance, love, nor a spontaneous burst of patriotism that, on the first day, filled the boulevards with fifty thousand blouses, which on the second won over to the people eighty thousand National Guards, and on the third choked the streets of Paris with barricades constructed by engineers and defended by men completely armed. The events of the last three days, Mercédès, have been maturing in the womb of Providence for the past ten years. It is their birth only which has now taken place, and to some the parturition seems a little premature, I suppose. This banquet caused the fright that hastened the event," added Dantès, laughing.
"You are very scientific in your comparisons," replied Mercédès, slightly blushing, "and I suppose I must admit, very apt. But tell me, love, is all over? That is, must you be away from me any more at night, and wander about, Heaven only knows where, in this dark and dangerous city, or Heaven only knows with whom or for what?"