"This is virtually resigning them."
"The abbé will pardon me for saying it is not. My rights are mine, whether I use them or not."
"Monseigneur understands that opportunity is a visitor that comes but once."
"I understand that the most extraordinary thing has happened to-day that will ever go unrecorded in history. One Bourbon offers to give away a throne he has lost and another Bourbon refuses it."
"You may well say it will go unrecorded in history. Excepting this lady,"—the abbé bowed toward Eagle,—"there is no witness."
"Wise precautions have been taken," I agreed. "This scrap of paper may mean anything or nothing."
"You decline?" he repeated.
"I think France is done with the Bourbons, monsieur the abbé. A fine spectacle they have made of themselves, cooling their heels all over Europe, waiting for Napoleon's shoes! Will I go sneaking and trembling to range myself among impotent kings and wrangle over a country that wants none of us? No, I never will! I see where my father slipped. I see where the eighteenth Louis slipped. I am a man tenacious beyond belief. You cannot loose my grip when I take hold. But I never have taken hold, I never will take hold—of my native country, struggling as she is to throw off hereditary rule!"
"You are an American!" said Abbé Edgeworth contemptuously.
"If France called to me out of need, I would fight for her. A lifetime of peaceful years I would toss away in a minute to die in one achieving battle for her. But she neither calls me nor needs me. A king is not simply an appearance—a continuation of hereditary rights!"