“Quite right,” answered the other, slapping him cheerfully on the shoulder; “quite right. A man who goes blindly into these matters seldom sees his way very clearly afterwards. But what would your friend have? We possess all the material of success, only waiting to be set in motion; and this I can prove to him in black and white. We have men, arms, artillery, ammunition, and money. This insurrection shall not fail, like some of its predecessors, for lack of the grease that keeps all human machinery in motion. A hundred thousand louis are ready at an hour’s notice, and another hundred thousand every week till the new coinage of James the Third is issued from the mint. Here, in the next province, in Lancashire, where the sun never shines, every seigneur, squire—what are they called?—has mounted his dependents, grooms, falconers, huntsmen, tenants—all horsemen of the first force. Five thousand cavalry will be in the saddle at twenty-four hours’ notice. Several battalions of Irish soldiers, brave and well-disciplined as our own, are assembled on the coast of Normandy, waiting only the signal to embark. Our infantry have shoes and clothes; our cavalry are provided with farriers and accoutrements; our artillery, on this occasion, not without draught-horses and harness. Come to me to-morrow afternoon, and I will furnish you with a written statement of our resources for Sir George’s information. And, Florian, you believe honestly that he might be tempted to join us?”
The other was revolving a thousand probabilities in his mind.
“I will do my best,” he answered, absently.
“Then I will risk it,” replied Malletort. “You shall also have a list of the principal noblemen and gentlemen who have given their adhesion to their rightful sovereign. I have upstairs a manifesto, to which these loyal cavaliers have attached their signatures. I never trust a man by halves, Florian, just as I never trust a woman at all. Nothing venture, nothing have. That paper would hang us all, no doubt; but I will confide it to you and take the risk. Yours shall be the credit of persuading Sir George to subscribe to it in his own hand.”
Florian assented, with a nod. Too much depressed to speak, he felt like some poor beast driven to the shambles, blundering on, dogged and stupefied, to its fate.
Malletort’s keen perceptions detected this despondency, and he endeavoured to cheer him up.
“At the new Court,” said he, “we shall probably behold our retired Musketeer commanding the Guards of his Sovereign, and carrying his gold baton on the steps of the throne. A peer, a favourite, a Councillor of State—what you will. His beautiful wife the admired and envied of the three kingdoms. They will owe their rank, their grandeur, their all, to Florian de St. Croix. Will not he—will not she be grateful? And Florian de St. Croix shall choose his own reward. Nothing the Church can offer will be esteemed too precious for such a servant. I am disinterested for once, since I shall return to France. In England, a man may exist; were it not for the climate he might even vegetate; but it is only in Paris that he can be said to live. Florian, it is a glorious prospect, and the road to fortune lies straight before us.”
“Through an enemy’s country,” replied the other, gravely. “Nothing shall persuade me but that the mass of the people are staunch to the Government.”
“The mass of the people!” repeated Malletort, contemptuously; “the mass of the people neither make revolutions nor oppose them. In point of fact they are the women and children who sit quietly at home. It is the highest and the lowest who are the discontented classes, and if you set these in motion, the one to lead in front, the other to push behind, why, the mass of the people, as you call them, may be driven whichever way you please, like a flock of sheep into a pen. Listen to those peasants singing over their liquor, and tell me if their barbarian ditties do not teach you which way the tide of feeling acts at present amongst the rabble?”
They stopped in their walk, and through the open window of the tap-room could hear Captain Bold’s treble quavering out a Jacobite ballad of the day, no less popular than nonsensical, as was attested by the stentorian chorus and wild jingling of glasses that accompanied it.