"Perhaps Moses, Sylla, Louis XI., Richelieu, Robespierre, and Napoleon
were but the same man who crosses our civilizations now and again,
like a comet across the sky," said a disciple of Ballanche.

"Why try to fathom the designs of Providence?" said Canalis, maker of
ballads.

"Come, now," said the man who set up for a critic, "there is nothing
more elastic in the world than your Providence."

"Well, sir, Louis XIV. sacrificed more lives over digging the
foundations of the Maintenon's aqueducts, than the Convention expended
in order to assess the taxes justly, to make one law for everybody,
and one nation of France, and to establish the rule of equal
inheritance," said Massol, whom the lack of a syllable before his name
had made a Republican.

"Are you going to leave our heads on our shoulders?" asked Moreau (of
the Oise), a substantial farmer. "You, sir, who took blood for wine
just now?"

"Where is the use? Aren't the principles of social order worth some
sacrifices, sir?"

"Hi! Bixiou! What's-his-name, the Republican, considers a landowner's
head a sacrifice!" said a young man to his neighbor.

"Men and events count for nothing," said the Republican, following out
his theory in spite of hiccoughs; "in politics, as in philosophy,
there are only principles and ideas."