Austria and Prussia would only be able to give battle two or three times. Would that be sufficient to ensure a successful occupation like the one which M. de Richelieu so foolishly failed to exploit in 1817? I do not think so."
At this point there was an interruption which was stifled by the hushes of the whole room. It came again from the old Imperial general who wanted the blue ribbon and wished to figure among the authors of the secret note.
"I do not think so," replied M. de la Mole, after the uproar had subsided. He laid stress on the "I" with an insolence which charmed Julien.
"That's a pretty piece of acting," he said to himself, as he made his pen almost keep pace with the marquis' words.
M. de la Mole annihilated the twenty campaigns of the turncoat with a well turned phrase. It is not only on foreign powers," continued the marquis in a more even tone, "on whom we shall be able to rely for a new military occupation. All those young men who write inflammatory articles in the Globe will provide you with three or four thousand young captains among whom you may find men with the genius, but not the good intentions of a Kléber, a Hoche, a Jourdan, a Pichegru."
"We did not know how to glorify him," said the president. "He should have been immortalized."
"Finally, it is necessary for France to have two parties," went on M. de la Mole; " but two parties not merely in name, but with clear-cut lines of cleavage. Let us realise what has got to be crushed. On the one hand the journalists and the electors, in a word, public opinion; youth and all that admire it. While it is stupefying itself with the noise of its own vain words, we have certain advantages of administrating the expenditure of the budget."
At this point there was another interruption.
"As for you, monsieur," said M. de!a Mole to the interrupter, with an admirable haughtiness and ease of mnnner, "you do not spend, if the words chokes you, but you devour the forty thousand francs put down to you in the State budget, and the eighty thousand which you receive from the civil list."
"Well, monsieur, since you force me to it, I will be bold enough to take you for an example. Like your noble
