d brought me. Your
comrade Dugourc offered me last week a picquet set with four Geniuses of
the People, four Liberties, four Equalities. Another was suggested, with
Sages and Heroes, Cato, Rousseau, Hannibal,--I don't know what all!...
And these cards had the advantage over yours, my friend, in being
coarsely drawn and cut on wood blocks--with a penknife. How little you
know the world to dream that players will use cards designed in the
taste of David and engraved a la Bartolozzi! And then again, what a
strange mistake to think it needs all this to-do to suit the old packs
to the new ideas. Out of their own heads, the good sansculottes can find
a corrective for what offends them, saying, instead of 'king'--'The
Tyrant!' or just 'The fat pig!' They go on using the same old filthy
cards and never buy new ones. The great market for playing-cards is the
gaming-hells of the Palais-Egalite; well, I advise you to go there and
offer the croupiers and punters there your Liberties, your Equalities,
your ... what d'ye call 'em?... Laws of hearts ... and come back and
tell me what sort of a reception they gave you!"

The _citoyen_ Blaise sat down on the counter, filliped away sundry
grains of snuff from his nankeen breeches and looking at Gamelin with an
air of gentle pity:

"Let me give you a bit of advice, _citoyen_; if you want to make your
living, drop your patriotic packs of cards, leave your revolutionary
symbols alone, have done with your Hercules, your hydras, your Furies
pursuing guilt, your Geniuses of Liberty, and paint me pretty girls. The
people's ardour for regeneration grows lukewarm with time, but men will
always love women. Paint me women, all pink and white, with little feet
and tiny hands. And get this into your thick skull that nobody cares a
fig about the Revolution or wants to hear another word about it."

But Evariste drew himself up in indignant protest:

"What! not hear another word of the Revolution!... But, why surely, the
restoration of liberty, the victories of our armies, the chastisement of
tyrants are events that will startle the most remote posterity. How
could we not be struck by such portents?... What! the sect of the
_sansculotte_ Jesus has lasted well-nigh eighteen centuries, and the
religion of Liberty is to be abolished after barely four years of
existence!"

But Jean Blaise resumed in a tone of superiority:

"You walk in a dream; _I_ see life as it is. Believe me, friend, the
Revolutio