ced how largely increased within the last few years is
the number of those who cry out, 'La Propriete, cest le vol'? Have you
considered the rapid growth of the International Association? I do not
say that for all these evils--the Empire is exclusively responsible.
To a certain degree they are found in all rich communities, especially
where democracy is more or less in the ascendant. To a certain extent
they exist in the large towns of Germany; they are conspicuously
increasing in England; they are acknowledged to be dangerous in the
United States of America; they are, I am told on good authority, making
themselves visible with the spread of civilization in Russia. But under
the French Empire they have become glaringly rampant, and I venture to
predict that the day is not far off when the rot at work throughout all
layers and strata of French society will insure a fall of the fabric at
the sound of which the world will ring.

"There is many a fair and stately tree which continues to throw out its
leaves and rear its crest till suddenly the wind smites it, and then,
and not till then, the trunk which seems so solid is found to be but the
rind to a mass of crumbled powder."

"Monsieur le Comte," said the Vicomte, "you are a severe critic and
a lugubrious prophet; but a German is so safe from revolution that he
takes alarm at the stir of movement which is the normal state of the
French esprit."

"French esprit may soon evaporate into Parisian betise. As to Germany
being safe from revolution, allow me to repeat a saying of Goethe's-but
has Monsieur le Vicomte ever heard of Goethe?"

"Goethe, of course,--tres joli ecrivain."

"Goethe said to some one who was making much the same remark as
yourself, 'We Germans are in a state of revolution now, but we do things
so slowly that it will be a hundred years before we Germans shall find
it out; but when completed, it will be the greatest revolution society
has yet seen, and will last like the other revolutions that, beginning,
scarce noticed, in Germany, have transformed the world.'"

"Diable, Monsieur le Comte! Germans transformed the world! What
revolutions do you speak of?"

"The invention of gunpowder, the invention of printing, and the
expansion of a monk's quarrel with his Pope into the Lutheran
revolution."

Here the German paused, and asked the Vicomte to introduce him to Vane,
which De Breze did by the title of Count von Rudesheim. On hearing
Vane's name, the Cou