the efforts I am making to offend nobody's ears, however long they may be. Well, gentlemen, I will be brief.
"I will tell you in quite common words: England has not got a sou with which to help the good cause. If Pitt himself were to come back he would never succeed with all his genius in duping the small English landowners, for they know that the short Waterloo campaign alone cost them a milliard of francs. As you like clear phrases," continued the speaker, becoming more and more animated, "I will say this to you: Help yourselves, for England has not got a guinea left to help you with, and when England does not pay, Austria, Russia and Prussia—who will only have courage but have no money—cannot launch more than one or two campaigns against France.
"One may hope that the young soldiers who will be recruited by the Jacobins will be beaten in the first campaign, and possibly in the second; but, even though I seem a revolutionary in your prejudiced eyes, in the third campaign—in the third campaign I say—you will have the soldiers of 1794 who were no longer the soldiers enlisted in 1792."
At this point interruption broke out simultaneously from three or four quarters.
"Monsieur," said the president to Julien, "Go and make a precis in the next room of the beginning of the report which you have written out."
Julien went out to his great regret. The speaker was just dealing with the question of probabilities which formed the usual subject for his meditations. "They are frightened of my making fun of them," he thought. When he was called back, M. de la Mole was saying with a seriousuess which seemed quite humorous to Julien who knew him so well,
"Yes, gentlemen, one finds the phrase, 'is it god, table or tub?' especially applicable to this unhappy people. 'It is god' exclaims the writer of fables. It is to you, gentlemen, that this noble and profound phrase seems to apply. Act on your own initiative, and noble France will appear again, almost such as our ancestors made her, and as our own eyes have seen her before the death of Louis XVI.
"England execrates disgraceful Jacobinism as much as we do, or at any rate her noble lords do. Without English gold,
