"Shut up. That's enough of it. There is no knowledge nor virtue worth
shedding a drop of blood for. If Truth were brought into liquidation,
we might find her insolvent."

"It would be much less trouble, no doubt, to amuse ourselves with
evil, rather than dispute about good. Moreover, I would give all the
speeches made for forty years past at the Tribune for a trout, for one
of Perrault's tales or Charlet's sketches."

"Quite right! . . . Hand me the asparagus. Because, after all, liberty
begets anarchy, anarchy leads to despotism, and despotism back again
to liberty. Millions have died without securing a triumph for any one
system. Is not that the vicious circle in which the whole moral world
revolves? Man believes that he has reached perfection, when in fact he
has but rearranged matters."

"Oh! oh!" cried Cursy, the _vaudevilliste_; "in that case, gentlemen,
here's to Charles X., the father of liberty."

"Why not?" asked Emile. "When law becomes despotic, morals are
relaxed, and vice versa.

"Let us drink to the imbecility of authority, which gives us such an
authority over imbeciles!" said the good banker.

"Napoleon left us glory, at any rate, my good friend!" exclaimed a
naval officer who had never left Brest.

"Glory is a poor bargain; you buy it dear, and it will not keep. Does
not the egotism of the great take the form of glory, just as for