Louis. You are right. So far from understanding you, I understand nothing. The age is too modern for me. I do not understand why this rabble is permitted to rule France; I do not even understand why it is permitted to live.
Eloise [with superiority]. Because you belong to the class that thought itself made of porcelain and the rest of the world clay. It is simple: the mud-ball breaks the vase.
Louis. You belong to the same class, even to the same family.
Eloise. You are wrong. One circumstance proves me no aristocrat.
Louis. What circumstance?
Eloise. That I happened to be born with brains. I can account for it only by supposing some hushed-up ancestral scandal. [Brusquely.] Do you understand that?
Louis. I overlook it. [He writes again.]
Eloise. Quibbling was always a habit of yours. [Snapping at him irritably.] Oh, stop that writing! You can't do it, and you don't need it. You blame the people because they turn on you now, after you've whipped and beaten and ground them underfoot for centuries and centuries and—
Louis. Quite a career for a man of twenty-nine!
Eloise. I have said that quibbling was—