That is the question."
"Intellect has made an end of everything," cried the Carlist.
"Come now! Absolute freedom has brought about national suicides; their triumph left them as listless as an English millionaire."
"Won't you tell us something new?
You have made fun of authority of all sorts to-day, which is every bit as vulgar as denying the existence of God.
So you have no belief left, and the century is like an old Sultan worn out by debauchery!
Your Byron, in short, sings of crime and its emotions in a final despair of poetry."
"Don't you know," replied Bianchon, quite drunk by this time, "that a dose of phosphorus more or less makes the man of genius or the scoundrel, a clever man or an idiot, a virtuous person or a criminal?"
"Can any one treat of virtue thus?" cried Cursy.
"Virtue, the subject of every drama at the theatre, the denoument of every play, the foundation of every court of law...."
"Be quiet, you ass.
You are an Achilles for virtue, without his heel," said Bixiou.
"Some drink!"
"What will you bet that I will drink a bottle of champagne like a flash, at one pull?"
"What a flash of wit!"
"Drunk as lords," muttered a young man gravely, trying to give some wine to his waistcoat.
"Yes, sir; real government is the art of ruling by public opinion."
"Opinion?
That is the most vicious jade of all.
According to you moralists and politicians, the laws you set up are always to go before those of nature, and opinion before conscience.
You are right and wrong both.
Suppose society bestows down pillows on us, that benefit is made up for by the gout; and justice is likewise tempered by red-tape, and colds accompany cashmere shawls."
"Wretch!" Emile broke in upon the misanthrope, "how can you slander civilization here at table, up to the eyes in wines and exquisite dishes?
Eat away at that roebuck with the gilded horns and feet, and do not carp at your mother..."
"Is it any fault of mine if Catholicism puts a million deities in a sack of flour, that Republics will end in a Napoleon, that monarchy dwells between the assassination of Henry IV. and the trial of Louis XVI., and Liberalism produces Lafayettes?"
"Didn't you embrace him in July?"
"No."
"Then hold your tongue, you sceptic."
"Sceptics are the most conscientious of men."
"They have no conscience."
"What are you saying?
They have two apiece at least!"
"So you want to discount heaven, a thoroughly commercial notion.
Ancient religions were but the unchecked development of physical pleasure, but we have developed a soul and expectations; some advance has been made."
"What can you expect, my friends, of a century filled with politics to repletion?" asked Nathan.
"What befell The History of the King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles, a most entrancing conception?..."
"I say," the would-be critic cried down the whole length of the table.
"The phrases might have been drawn at hap-hazard from a hat, 'twas a work written 'down to Charenton.'"
"You are a fool!"
"And you are a rogue!"
"Oh! oh!"
"Ah! ah!"
"They are going to fight."
"No, they aren't."
"You will find me to-morrow, sir."
"This very moment," Nathan answered.
"Come, come, you pair of fire-eaters!"
"You are another!" said the prime mover in the quarrel.
"Ah, I can't stand upright, perhaps?" asked the pugnacious Nathan, straightening himself up like a stag-beetle about to fly.
He stared stupidly round the table, then, completely exhausted by the effort, sank back into his chair, and mutely hung his head.