rised that you should have refused the appointment
offered, and thinks that the Marshal would understand it still less."

"The Marshal, my son," began the father, not without emotion, "there
are many things that he cannot understand. I thank my God that I
retired to this solitude more than ten years ago, for were I still in
office, my conscience would compel me to resign it now, and that
perhaps would be still more incomprehensible to these two valiant
gentlemen. I neither envy nor admire their patriotism and God preserve
our family from the fate of rendering such services to the king.
Therefore, my dear, my beloved son, I once more give you a paternal
warning to abandon these men, it would send me to the grave to see you
act like them. What do they require of us? no open, direct service, no
assistance which becomes citizens, and which all honorable men are
ready to render: but we are required to turn spies and betray our
fellow-subjects and our countrymen, to give them up to the rack and to
the stake, and to rejoice in the inhumanity which depopulates the land,
and congratulate ourselves at having incurred the hatred of God and of
all mankind, and if we enquire into this too closely, we are looked
upon as traitors to our king and country."

"Is it ever permitted to a subject to enquire?" hastily rejoined
Edmond, "I am aware of your sentiments, my father, and I regret them;
but ought the subject to enquire into this? May I be allowed to ask
where is the submission, where are the ties that bind him to the state,
where the holiness, the sublimity, the piety, the honor by which we are
men and citizens, and upon which our virtue and existence repose; if I
am permitted to say: here I renounce my obedience to you, this you dare
not command, though you were my king; though my country, even heaven
itself should speak to me through your revered lips."

"You are right, my son," replied the old man, "and because you ask
this, you will ever be in the right; the ruler should with humble piety
and with godly fear keep within these limits, respect the conscience of
his subjects, keep inviolate the promises, the oaths which his noble
predecessors made, and which he has repeated after them, and not hurl
with his own hand the burning brand into his granaries, by raising up
extortioners, judges, and persecutors!--And woe to those, who thus
abuse the weakness of his age, his pliable conscience and their own
influence; and woe to him wh