to
keep something of the Revolution, he is forced to respect the national
domain, to guarantee to every one his property, his rank, and
everything he has acquired under the new laws. Without that, what
right would he have to be Emperor? If he had not maintained equality
why should the nation wish to have him? The others, on the contrary,
have attacked everything; they want to destroy everything that we have
done. Now you understand why I like him better than the others.

"Ah!" said Mother Gredel, "that is new!" and she laughed
contemptuously. I would have given anything if she had been at Quatre
Vents.

"There was a time when you talked otherwise, when he re-established the
bishops and the archbishops and the cardinals, when he had himself
crowned by the Pope, and consecrated with oil from the holy ampoule,[1]
when he recalled the emigres, when he gave up the chateaux and forests
to the great families, when he made princes and dukes and barons by the
dozen; how many times have I heard you say that all that was atrocious,
that he had betrayed the Revolution, that you would have preferred the
Bourbons, because they did not know any other way, that they were like
blackbirds, who only whistle one tune because they know no other, and
because they think it the most beautiful air in the world. While he,
the result of the Revolution, whose father had only a few dozens of
goats on the mountains of Corsica, should have known that all men are
equal, that courage and genius alone elevate them above their
fellows,--that he should have despised all those old notions, and that
he should have made war only to defend the new rights, the new ideas,
which are just and which nothing can arrest: did you not say that, when
you were talking with old Colin in the rear of our garden, for fear of
being arrested--did you not say that between yourselves and before me?"

[1] Vial which contains the oil for anointing the kings of France.

Father Goulden had grown quite pale. He looked down at his feet and
turned his snuff-box round and round in his fingers as if he were
thinking, and I saw his emotion in his face.

"Yes, I said it," he replied, "and I think so still--you have a good
memory, Mother Gredel. It is true that for ten years Colin and I have
been obliged to hide ourselves if we spoke of events that will
certainly be accomplished, and it is the despotism of one man born
among us, whom we have sustained with our own blood, w