“You! and Frenchmen, too! That is magnificent.”
“It is magnificent; but it will cost us dear,” said Gilbert, sorrowfully.
“Pooh! the money is spent; the bill is paid,” said Billot, joyously. “A little gold, a great deal of blood, and the debt is liquidated.”
“Blind enthusiast!” said Gilbert, “who sees not in this dawning in the west the germ of ruin to us all! Alas! why do I accuse them, when I did not see more clearly than they? The giving liberty to the New World, I fear, I fear greatly, is to prove the total ruin of the old one.”
“Rerum novus nascitur ordo!” exclaimed Pitou, with great Revolutionary self-possession.
“Silence, child!” said Gilbert.
“Was it, then, more difficult to overcome the English than it is now to quiet the French?” asked Billot.
“A new world,” repeated Gilbert; “that is to say, a vast open space, a clear table to work upon,—no laws, but no abuses; no ideas, but no prejudices. In France, thirty thousand square leagues of territory for thirty millions of people; that is to say, should the space be equally divided, scarcely room for a cradle or a grave for each. Out yonder, in America, two hundred thousand square leagues for three millions of persons; frontiers which are ideal, for they border on the desert, which is to say, immensity. In those two hundred thousand leagues, navigable rivers, having a course of a thousand leagues; virgin forests, of which God alone knows the limits,—that is to say, all the elements of life, of civilization, and of a brilliant future. Oh, how easy it is, Billot, when a man is called Lafayette, and is accustomed to wield a sword when a man is called Washington, and is accustomed to reflect deeply,—how easy is it to combat against walls of wood, of earth, of stone, of human flesh! But when, instead of founding, it is necessary to destroy; when we see in the old order of things that we are obliged to attack walls of bygone, crumbling ideas, and behind the ruins even of these walls, that crowds of people and of interests still take refuge; when, after having found the idea, we find that in order to make the people adopt it, it will be necessary, perhaps, to decimate that people, from the old who remember, down to the child who has still to learn; from the recollection which is the monument, down to the instinct which is the germ of it,-then, oh, then, Billot! it is a task which will make all those shudder who can see behind the horizon. I am far-sighted, Billot, and I shudder.”
“Pardon me, sir,” said Billot, with his sound good sense; “you accused me, a short time since, of hating the Revolution, and now you are making it execrable to me.”
“But have I told you that I renounce it?”
“Errare humanum est,” murmured Pitou; “sed perseverare diabolicum.”
And he drew his feet towards him with his hands.
“I shall, however, persevere,” continued Gilbert, “for although I see the obstacles, I can perceive the end; and that end is splendid, Billot. It is not only the liberty of France that I am dreaming of; but it is the liberty of the whole world. It is not physical equality; but it is equality before the laws,—equality of rights. It is not the fraternity of our own citizens, but fraternity between all nations. I may be losing my own soul; my body may perhaps perish in the struggle,” continued Gilbert, in a melancholy tone; “but it matters not. The soldier who is sent to the assault of a fortress, sees the cannon on its ramparts, sees the balls with which they are loaded, sees the match placed near the touch-hole; he sees even more than this,—he sees the direction in which they are pointed, he feels that this piece of black iron may pass through his own breast,—but he still rushes onward; the fortress must be taken. Well, we are all soldiers, Father Billot. Forward, then! and over the heaps of our dead bodies may one day march the generations of which this boy now present is the advanced guard.”
“I do not really know why you despair, Monsieur Gilbert. Is it because an unfortunate man was this day murdered on the Place de Grève?”