"Do you think it true, Louis, as was reported," asked Marrast, "that as soon as the smoke of Fieschi's explosion swept off, and the old man found himself standing unharmed amid a heap of slain and mangled, Marshal Mortier and Colonel Rieussec being among the killed, his first exclamation was this, with, ill-concealed gratification, 'Now I shall get my appanages and the dotations for the boys.'"
"Nothing is more probable," said Louis Blanc. "That old man has but one impulse—selfishness, and but one attachment—to his family—his family, because it is his. His purse and family have for years been his sole objects of love. To aggrandize his own has been for years his sole end and aim. He parcels out the thrones and kingdoms of Europe among his children as if it were but a family estate."
"What thoughtful selfishness!" exclaimed Flocon; "and at a moment, too, when he had but just escaped an awful death, and all around him flowed the blood and lay scattered the lacerated limbs of his faithful servants, either dead or dying with groans and shrieks of most agonizing torture, and all because of himself; how disgraceful that, at such a terrible moment, his first thought should have been of the few more francs his trembling hand was striving to tear from a people by whom he had already been made the richest man in Europe, and which the occurrence of this dreadful event might serve to win for him."
"Well," said Rollin, "whether this event aided to win the appanages and dotations, and was so designed, or not, it is very sure the aforesaid appanages and dotations were secured. No wonder that such attempts succeed each other so rapidly—one every year, at the least! When was the next, Louis—that of Alibaud, I think?"
"That took place about sunset on the 25th of June, '36," was the reply. "Alibaud discharged a walking-stick-gun at the King, as he left the Tuileries, on his way to Neuilly, at the corner of the Porte Royale. That Alibaud was a mere boy, and a very interesting and intelligent boy, too; but for some mysterious cause he did not find favor with the court, as did Fieschi. He evidently attempted the assassination from conviction, from a feeling of manifest destiny. After his failure, he only wished to die, and to die at once. All who have succeeded Alibaud have been but vulgar cut-throats."
"In what year was the insurrection of Armand Barbes and Martin Bernard?" asked Flocon. "That proved most disastrous to our cause."
"That was in '39, May, I think," answered Rollin. "Barbes, Blanqui and Bernard were arraigned as leaders. Marie and myself were advocates for Barbes. Blanqui was sentenced to death and Barbes to the galleys for life. But we obtained commutation of penalty for both."
"And where is to be the end of all these things?" asked Marrast, gloomily, as he continued pacing the chamber with folded arms, his head resting on his bosom. "Are the ten years on which we have now entered to be characterized by the fruitless efforts of the past? Are the people of France again, and again, and again to strike for freedom, only to be stricken into the dust and trampled beneath the armed heel of a despot's myrmidons? Are the streets of Lyons, Paris and Marseilles again to be drenched with the life-blood of their dwellers, poured out as freely as water and as fruitlessly? Are we all again, for full ten years, to toil, strive, struggle and suffer; to be hunted down like the vilest criminals, and, like criminals, plunged into the most pestilential dungeons; to be stripped like slaves of our hard-won earnings, and to be deprived of the most humble franchises of men claiming at all to be free; to be treated with scorn and contumely, and to be debarred the exercise of those common rights, which, like air and water, belong to all; I say, brothers, are all these scenes to be repeated during the ten years on which we have now entered, as they have been witnessed during the ten years now past?"
"You speak sadly, Armand," observed Rollin.