"Paris will remain," he admitted benevolently, "the French will remain,
because a nation is not easily suppressed; but they will not retain
their former place. We shall govern the world; they will continue to
occupy themselves in inventing fashions, in making life agreeable for
visiting foreigners; and in the intellectual world, we shall encourage
them to educate good actresses, to produce entertaining novels and to
write witty comedies. . . . Nothing more."

Desnoyers laughed as he shook his cousin's hand, pretending to take his
words as a paradox.

"I mean it," insisted Hartrott. "The last hour of the French Republic as
an important nation has sounded. I have studied it at close range,
and it deserves no better fate. License and lack of confidence
above--sterile enthusiasm below."

Upon turning his head, he again caught Argensola's malicious smile.

"We know all about that kind of study," he added aggressively. "We are
accustomed to examine the nations of the past, to dissect them fibre by
fibre, so that we recognize at a glance the psychology of the living."

The Bohemian fancied that he saw a surgeon talking self-sufficiently
about the mysteries of the will before a corpse. What did this pedantic
interpreter of dead documents know about life? . . .

When the door closed, he approached his friend who was returning
somewhat dismayed. Argensola no longer considered Doctor Julius von
Hartrott crazy.