such a house-wife, so thrifty, scolds me if I buy
her a ribbon, poor love! No wonder that I would pull down a society that
dares to scoff at her--dares to say she is not my wife, and her children
are base born. No, I have some savings left yet. War to society, war to
the knife!"

"Monnier," said Lebeau, in a voice that evinced emotion, "listen to
me: I have received injuries from society which, when they were fresh,
half-maddened me--that is twenty years ago. I would then have thrown
myself into any plot against society that proffered revenge; but
society, my friend, is a wall of very strong masonry, as it now stands;
it may be sapped in the course of a thousand years, but stormed in a
day--no. You dash your head against it--you scatter your brains, and
you dislodge a stone. Society smiles in scorn, effaces the stain, and
replaces the stone. I no longer war against society. I do war against
a system in that society which is hostile to me--systems in France are
easily overthrown. I say this because I want to use you, and I do not
want to deceive."

"Deceive me, bah! You are an honest man," cried Monnier; and he seized
Lebeau's hand, and shook it with warmth and vigour.

"But for you I should have been a mere grumbler. No doubt I should have
cried out where the shoe pinched, and railed against laws that vex
me; but from the moment you first talked to me I became a new man. You
taught me to act, as Rousseau and Madame de Grantmesnil had taught me to
think and to feel. There is my brother, a grumbler too, but professes
to have a wiser head than mine. He is always warning me against
you--against joining a strike--against doing any thing to endanger my
skin. I always went by his advice till you taught me that it was well
enough for women to talk and complain; men should dare and do."

"Nevertheless," said Lebeau, "your brother is a safer counsellor to a
pere de famille than I. I repeat what I have so often said before:
I desire, and I resolve, that the Empire of M. Bonaparte shall be
overthrown. I see many concurrent circumstances to render that desire
and resolve of practicable fulfilment. You desire and resolve the same
thing. Up to that point we can work together. I have encouraged your
action only so far as it served my design; but I separate from you the
moment you would ask me to aid your design in the hazard of experiments
which the world has never yet favoured, and trust me, Monnier, the world
never will favour."