saddle; but I don't sympathise with the means you have taken to arrive at
that renown. I am not myself an Imperialist--a Vandemar can be scarcely
that. But if I am compelled to be on board a ship, I don't wish to take
out its planks and let in an ocean, when all offered to me instead is a
crazy tub and a rotten rope."

"_Tres bien_," said Duplessis, in Parliamentary tone and phrase.

"But," said De Mauleon, with his calm smile, "would you like the captain
of the ship, when the sky darkened and the sea rose, to ask the common
sailors 'whether they approved his conduct on altering his course or
shortening his sail'? Better trust to a crazy tub and a rotten rope than
to a ship in which the captain consults a plebiscite."

"Monsieur," said Duplessis, "your metaphor is ill chosen no metaphor
indeed is needed. The head of the State was chosen by the voice of the
people, and, when required to change the form of administration which the
people had sanctioned, and inclined to do so from motives the most
patriotic and liberal, he is bound again to consult the people from whom
he holds his power. It is not, however, of the plebiscite we were
conversing, so much as of the atrocious conspiracy of assassins--so
happily discovered in time. I presume that Monsieur de Mauleon must
share the indignation which true Frenchmen of every party must feel
against a combination united by the purpose of murder."

The Vicomte bowed as in assent. "But do you believe," asked a Liberal
Depute, "that such a combination existed, except in the visions of the
police or the cabinet of a Minister?"

Duplessis looked keenly at De Mauleon while this question was put to him.