"Oh, I am too old to be of importance; I shall die of gout," said the old nobleman.
"You have disposed of us effectually," said the poet, "and I shall be greatly honored at being permitted to leave this world in such good company. But may I ask, are we to be the sole victims of your revolution?"
"Far from it," answered the old chevalier, closing his eyes and speaking in an abstracted manner, as if talking to himself, while his friends listened in rapt attention, half inclined to smile at the affair as at a joke, and yet so serious was he that they could not escape the influence of his seriousness.
"I can see," he continued, "a long line of the most illustrious in France. They are passing onward to the block. They are princes of the blood; aye, even the king's head shall fall."
"Enough!" cried out the voice of d'Arlincourt, above the general exclamations of horror that the chevalier's pretended vision called forth. "You overstep the line, Chevalier de Creux. I do not object to a pleasantry, but when you go so far as to predict the execution of the king you carry a jest too far. It is time to call a halt."
"But was it a jest?" asked the chevalier dryly.
"A very poor one," said de Lacheville.
"My dear friend," said the chevalier in his blandest tone, "I am not predicting what I should like to have take place. Not what ought to be, but what will be."
The count scowled and de Lacheville turned away with a shrug and began a conversation with Madame de Rémur.
"We all know that the chevalier is a merry gentleman, yet no jester," said St. Hilaire. "What will be, will be. I, for one, am willing to drink a toast to the chevalier's revolution. Blaise, bring out some of that wine I received from the Count de Beaujeu. I lost fifty thousand livres to him the night he made me a present of this wine; it will be like drinking liquid gold."