"Ah, Marchioness," answered Plouernel, "you are the terrible archangel who with her flaming sword will defend the monarchy and nobility. You are right. Safety lies in the abdication of the King and the formation of an inflexible council of regents. The monarch must be eliminated."
"Your most dangerous enemy, Count of Plouernel," replied she, "is the Third Estate! Has this bourgeoisie not told you, through Sieyès's organ, that up till now it has been nothing, it which ought to be everything! There is the enemy. The people, its intoxication once passed, will fall back into its misery and abject submissiveness. Having cried its cry in the public place, hunger will again seize it by the throat. 'The people, always ridden by want, has never the time to carry out the revolutions which it essays.' It is against the bourgeoisie that war to the knife must be carried on."
"For one proof out of a thousand of the truth of that statement," assented the Count, "is not Desmarais the lawyer one of the firiest tribunes in the National Assembly?"
"My dear Count," said the cavalry officer to Plouernel, "did you not once treat a fellow of that name to a good cudgeling?"
"This Desmarais is himself the hero of that episode you refer to—the very same whippersnapper," answered the Count.
Aside Victoria said to herself: "And my brother John is the sweetheart of Mademoiselle Desmarais. A singular coincidence!"
"How did you come to give him his cudgel sauce, Count?" inquired the Cardinal.
"My counsel were arguing before the court a case involving an estate left to my brother, Abbot Plouernel, at present in Rome. Desmarais, forgetting the respect due to a man of my station, had the insolence to speak of me in terms hardly reverent. Informed of the fact by my attorneys, I had Desmarais seized by three of my servants one night as he was leaving his lodgings. They administered to him a sound drubbing with green sticks, after which my first lackey said to him: 'Sir, the thrashing which we have just had the honor of presenting to you, is from Monseigneur Plouernel, our master. Let the lesson be a profitable one.'"
"That," said the Viscount of Mirabeau, "was as good as the exquisite bastinado given to Arouet 'Voltaire' by the orders of the Prince of Rohan. That's the way to treat the bourgeoisie."
"Voltaire perhaps owes his fame to that little chastisement," suggested the Duke.