takes, for I was but a woman. But why was there then no man
who rose above his age? The Duke of Alba had a soul of iron; Philip II.
was stupefied by Catholic belief; Henri IV. was a gambling soldier and
a libertine; the Admiral, a stubborn mule. Louis XI. lived too
soon, Richelieu too late. Virtuous or criminal, guilty or not in the
Saint-Bartholomew, I accept the onus of it; I stand between those two
great men,--the visible link of an unseen chain. The day will come when
some paradoxical writer will ask if the peoples have not bestowed the
title of executioner among their victims. It will not be the first time
that humanity has preferred to immolate a god rather than admit its
own guilt. You are shedding upon two hundred clowns, sacrificed for a
purpose, the tears you refuse to a generation, a century, a world!
You forget that political liberty, the tranquillity of a nation, nay,
knowledge itself, are gifts on which destiny has laid a tax of blood!'
'But,' I exclaimed, with tears in my eyes, 'will the nations never be
happy at less cost?' 'Truth never leaves her well but to bathe in the
blood which refreshes her,' she replied. 'Christianity, itself the
essence of all truth, since it comes from God, was fed by the blood of
martyrs, which flowed in torrents; and shall it not ever flow? You will
learn this, you who are destined to be one of the builders of the social
edifice founded by the Apostles. So long as you level heads you will be
applauded, but take your trowel in hand, begin to reconstruct, and your
fellows will kill you.' Blood! blood! the word sounded in my ears like
a knell. 'According to you,' I cried, 'Protestantism has the right to
reason as you do!' But Catherine had disappeared, as if some puff of air
had suddenly extinguished the supernatural light which enabled my mind
to see that Figure whose proportions had gradually become gigantic.
And then, without warning, I found within me a portion of myself
which adopted the monstrous doctrine delivered by the Italian. I woke,
weeping, bathed in sweat, at the moment when my reason told me firmly,
in a gentle voice, that neither kings nor nations had the right to apply
such principles, fit only for a world of atheists."

"How would you save a falling monarchy?" asked Beaumarchais.

"God is present," replied the little lawyer.

"Therefore," remarked Monsieur de Calonne, with the inconceivable levity
which characterized him, "we have the agreeable resource of bel