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“How are matters going with you?” asked Leon, delivering to Publicola one of his feet, already washed and prepared by the valet.

“I am forced to take two pupils,–two young fellows who, despairing of fortune, have quitted surgery for corporistics; they were actually dying of hunger; and yet they are full of talent.”

“I’m not asking you about pedestrial affairs, I want to know how you are getting on politically.”

Masson gave a glance at Gazonal, more eloquent than any species of question.

“Oh! you can speak out, that’s my cousin; in a way he belongs to you; he thinks himself legitimist.”

“Well! we are coming along, we are advancing! In five years from now Europe will be with us. Switzerland and Italy are fermenting finely; and when the occasion comes we are all ready. Here, in Paris, we have fifty thousand armed men, without counting two hundred thousand citizens who haven’t a penny to live upon.”

“Pooh,” said Leon, “how about the fortifications?”

“Pie-crust; we can swallow them,” replied Masson.

“In the first place, we sha’n’t let the cannon in, and, in the second, we’ve got a little machine more powerful than all the forts in the world,–a machine, due to a doctor, which cured more people during the short time we worked it than the doctors ever killed.”

“How you talk!” exclaimed Gazonal, whose flesh began to creep at Publicola’s air and manner.

“Ha! that’s the thing we rely on! We follow Saint-Just and Robespierre; but we’ll do better than they; they were timid, and you see what came of it; an emperor! the elder branch! the younger branch! The Montagnards didn’t lop the social tree enough.”

“Ah ca! you, who will be, they tell me, consul, or something of that kind, tribune perhaps, be good enough to remember,” said Bixiou, “that I have asked your protection for the last dozen years.”

“No harm shall happen to you; we shall need wags, and you can take the place of Barere,” replied the corn-doctor.

“And I?” said Leon.

“Ah, you! you are my client, and that will save you; for genius is an odious privilege, to which too much is accorded in France; we shall be forced to annihilate some of our greatest men in order to teach others to be simple citizens.”

The corn-cutter spoke with a semi-serious, semi-jesting air that made Gazonal shudder.

“So,” he said, “there’s to be no more religion?”

“No more religion OF THE STATE,” replied the pedicure, emphasizing the last words; “every man will have his own. It is very fortunate that the government is just now endowing convents; they’ll provide our funds. Everything, you see, conspires in our favour. Those who pity the peoples, who clamor on behalf of proletaries, who write works against the Jesuits, who busy themselves about the amelioration of no matter what,–the communists, the humanitarians, the philanthropists, you understand,–all these people are our advanced guard. While we are storing gunpowder, they are making the tinder which the spark of a single circumstance will ignite.”

“But what do you expect will make the happiness of France?” cried Gazonal.

“Equality of citizens and cheapness of provisions. We mean that there will be no persons lacking anything, no millionaires, no suckers of blood and victims.”

“That’s it!–maximum and minimum,” said Gazonal.

“You’ve said it,” replied the corn-cutter, decisively.

“No more manufacturers?” asked Gazonal.

“The state will manufacture. We shall all be the usufructuaries of France; each will have his ration as on board ship; and all the world will work according to their capacity.”

“Ah!” said Gazonal, “and while awaiting the time when you can cut off the heads of aristocrats–“

“I cut their nails,” said the radical republican, putting up his tools and finishing the jest himself.

Then he bowed very politely and went away.

“Can this be possible in 1845?” cried Gazonal.

“If there were time we could show you,” said his cousin, “all the personages of 1793, and you could talk with them. You have just seen Marat; well! we know Fouquier-Tinville, Collot d’Herbois, Robespierre, Chabot, Fouche, Barras; there is even a magnificent Madame Roland.”