"When you say the people you mean, of course, the populace. Will
you abolish it? That is the only way to ameliorate its lot, for as
long as it remains populace its lot will be damnation."

"You argue, of course, for the side that employs you. That is
natural, I suppose." M. de Vilmorin spoke between sorrow and
indignation.

"On the contrary, I seek to argue with absolute detachment. Let us
test these ideas of yours. To what form of government do you aspire?
A republic, it is to be inferred from what you have said. Well, you
have it already. France in reality is a republic to-day."

Philippe stared at him. "You are being paradoxical, I think. What
of the King?"

"The King? All the world knows there has been no king in France
since Louis XIV. There is an obese gentleman at Versailles who
wears the crown, but the very news you bring shows for how little
he really counts. It is the nobles and clergy who sit in the high
places, with the people of France harnessed under their feet, who
are the real rulers. That is why I say that France is a republic;
she is a republic built on the best pattern - the Roman pattern.
Then, as now, there were great patrician families in luxury,
preserving for themselves power and wealth, and what else is
accounted worth possessing; and there was the populace crushed and
groaning, sweating, bleeding, starving, and perishing in the Roman
kennels. That was a republic; the mightiest we have seen."