I observed that, when the conquest was achieved, the victors, like Augustus and Antony, might quarrel at last.
"Well, then, even if they did, the combat would finish in a day what it would have taken centuries of the tardy wars of old times to decide. Six hours at Pharsalia settled the civil wars of Rome, and pacified the world for five hundred years."
"But which side would be content to be the beaten one?" I asked.
"Neither," replied a restless, but remarkably broad-foreheaded and deep-browed personage at the opposite side of the table. "The combat would be eternal, or must end in mutual ruin. An universal empire would be beyond the government of man by law, or his control by the sword. I prefer enlightening the people until they shall want no control."
"But will they buy your lamp?" said Carnot, with a smile.
"At least they have done so pretty extensively, if I am to believe the public. It was but this day, that I received a notice that there had been sent forth the hundred thousandth copy of my 'Qu'est ce que le Tiers Etat.'"
"That was not a lamp, but a firebrand," said a hollow voice at a distance down the table; which reminded me of the extraordinary orator whom I had heard in the Jacobin Club. Carnot looked round to discover this strange accuser, and added, in a loud and stern tone—
"Whether lamp or firebrand, I pronounce to all good Frenchmen that it was a great gift to France. It was the grammar of a new language, the language of liberty! It was the sound of a trumpet, the trumpet of revolution! Still M. de Siêyes," said he, turning to the author of this celebrated performance, "all things have their time, and yours is not yet come. I cannot give up the soldier. I am for no tardy movement, when the country is in peril; the field must be cleared before it can be cultivated. You must sweep war from your gates, and faction from your streets, before you can sit down to teach a people. Even then the task is not easy. To know nothing, or to know something badly, are two kinds of ignorance which will always tempt the majority of mankind."
"Is there not a third kind of ignorance more dangerous still—that of knowing more than one ought to know?" interposed another speaker, whose countenance had already struck me as one of the most problematical that I had ever seen. His composed yet keen physiognomy, strongly reminded me of the portraits of the Italian Conclave—some of the cardinals of Giorgione and Titian; at once subtle and dignified.
Carnot smiled, and said to me in a low tone, "That is a touch at Siêyes. Those two men never meet without a fencing-match. One of them has been a bishop, and cannot forgive the loss of his mitre. Siêyes has been nothing, but intends to be more than a bishop yet—if he can. Talleyrand and he hate each other with the hatred of rival beauties."