directness of a point of steel. The Bishop quivered under it;
no reply occurred to him; but he was offended by this mode of alluding
to Bossuet. The best of minds will have their fetiches, and they
sometimes feel vaguely wounded by the want of respect of logic.

The conventionary began to pant; the asthma of the agony
which is mingled with the last breaths interrupted his voice;
still, there was a perfect lucidity of soul in his eyes. He went on:--

"Let me say a few words more in this and that direction;
I am willing. Apart from the Revolution, which, taken as a whole,
is an immense human affirmation, '93 is, alas! a rejoinder.
You think it inexorable, sir; but what of the whole monarchy, sir?
Carrier is a bandit; but what name do you give to Montrevel?
Fouquier-Tainville is a rascal; but what is your opinion as to
Lamoignon-Baville? Maillard is terrible; but Saulx-Tavannes,
if you please? Duchene senior is ferocious; but what epithet
will you allow me for the elder Letellier? Jourdan-Coupe-Tete is
a monster; but not so great a one as M. the Marquis de Louvois.
Sir, sir, I am sorry for Marie Antoinette, archduchess and queen;
but I am also sorry for that poor Huguenot woman, who, in 1685,
under Louis the Great, sir, while with a nursing infant, was bound,
naked to the waist, to a stake, and the child kept at a distance;
her breast swelled with milk and her heart with anguish;
the little one, hungry and pale, beheld that breast and cried
and agonized; the executioner said to the woman, a mother and a nurse,
`Abjure!' giving her her choice between the death of her infant
and the death of her conscience. What say you to that torture
of Tantalus as applied to a mother? Bear this well in mind sir:
the French Revolution had its reasons for existence; its wrath will