s only trodden by the weak-hearted and the
timid? Because they would not draw the sword in a cause they abhor,
and for a faction they despised; neither would they shed their blood to
assure the triumph of a rabble."

"Nor would I," interposed the lieutenant, while a slight flush coloured
his cheek. "The cause in which I perilled life was that of France, my
country. You may safely trust, that the nation capable of such conquests
will neither be disgraced by bad rulers, nor dishonoured by cowardly
ones."

"I have no faith in Republicans," said Alfred, scornfully.

"Because they were not born to a title, perhaps! But do you know how
many of those who now carry victory into foreign lands belong to this
same class that includes all your sympathy?--prouder, far prouder, that
they sustain the honour of France against her enemies than that
they carry the blazon of a marquis or the coronet of a duke on their
escutcheon? You look incredulous! Nay, I speak no more than what I well
know: for instance, the humble lieutenant who now addresses you can
claim rank as high and ancient as your own. You have heard of the
Liancourts?"

"Le Duc de Liancourt?"

"Yes; I am, or rather I was, the Duc de Liancourt," said the lieutenant,
with an almost imperceptible struggle: "my present rank is
Sous-Lieutenant of the Third Lancers. Now listen to me calmly for a few
moments, and I hope to shew you, that in a country where a dreadful
social earthquake has uprooted every foundation of rank, and strewed the
ground with the ruins of every thing like prescription, it is nobler and
better to shew that nobility could enter the lists, unaided by its
prestige, and win the palm, among those who vainly boasted themselves
better and braver. This we have done, not by assuming the monk's cowl
and the friar's cord, but by carrying the knapsack and the musket; not
by shirking the struggle, but by confronting it. Where is the taunt now
against the nobility of France? whose names figure oftenest in the lists
of killed and wounded? whose lot is it most frequently to mount first to
the assault or the breach? No, no, take to the alb and the surplice if
your vocation prompt it, but do not assume to say that no other road is
open to a Frenchman because his heart is warmed by noble blood."

If Alfred was at first shocked by hearing assertions so opposed to all
the precepts of his venerated tutor, he was soon ashamed of offering
opposition to one so far more capabl