ut also as the
personification of equality."

"He!" cried the marquise: "Napoleon the type of equality! For mercy's
sake, then, what would you call Robespierre? Come, come, do not strip
the latter of his just rights to bestow them on the Corsican, who, to my
mind, has usurped quite enough."

"Nay, madame; I would place each of these heroes on his right
pedestal--that of Robespierre on his scaffold in the Place Louis Quinze;
that of Napoleon on the column of the Place Vendome. The only difference
consists in the opposite character of the equality advocated by these
two men; one is the equality that elevates, the other is the equality
that degrades; one brings a king within reach of the guillotine, the
other elevates the people to a level with the throne. Observe," said
Villefort, smiling, "I do not mean to deny that both these men were
revolutionary scoundrels, and that the 9th Thermidor and the 4th of
April, in the year 1814, were lucky days for France, worthy of being
gratefully remembered by every friend to monarchy and civil order;
and that explains how it comes to pass that, fallen, as I trust he is
forever, Napoleon has still retained a train of parasitical satellites.
Still, marquise, it has been so with other usurpers--Cromwell, for
instance, who was not half so bad as Napoleon, had his partisans and
advocates."

"Do you know, Villefort, that you are talking in a most dreadfully
revolutionary strain? But I excuse it, it is impossible to expect the
son of a Girondin to be free from a small spice of the old leaven." A
deep crimson suffused the countenance of Villefort.

"'Tis true, madame," answered he, "that my father was a Girondin, but he
was not among the number of those who voted for the king's death; he
was an equal sufferer with yourself during the Reign of Terror, and
had well-nigh lost his head on the same scaffold on which your father
perished."

"True," replied the marquise, without wincing in the slightest degree at
the tragic remembrance thus called up; "but bear in mind, if you please,
that our respective parents underwent persecution and proscription from
diametrically opposite principles; in proof of which I may remark, that
while my family remained among the stanchest adherents of the exiled
princes, your father lost no time in joining the new government; and
that while the Citizen Noirtier was a Girondin, the Count Noirtier
became a senator."

"Dear mother," interposed Renee, "you know ver