Page:The Elusive Pimpernel.djvu/8

 of a virgin patriot; a month since his murderess walked proudly, even enthusiastically, to the guillotine! There has been no reaction — only a great sigh! … Not of content or satisfied lust, but a sigh such as the man-eating tiger might heave after his first taste of long-coveted blood.

A sigh for more!

A king on the scaffold; a queen, degraded and abased, awaiting death, which lingers on the threshold of her infamous prison; eight hundred scions of ancient houses that have made the history of France; brave generals, Custine, Blanchelande, Houchard, Beauharnais; worthy patriots, noble-hearted women, misguided enthusiasts, all by the score and by the hundred, up the few wooden steps which lead to the guillotine.

An achievement, of a truth!

And still that sigh for more!

But for the moment — a few seconds only — Paris looked round her mighty self, and thought things over!

The man-eating tiger for the space of a sigh licked his powerful jaws and pondered!

Something new! — something wonderful!

We have had a new Constitution, a new Justice, new Laws, a new Almanac!

What next?

Why, obviously! How comes it that great intellectual, æsthetic Paris never thought of such a wonderful thing before?

A new religion!!

Christianity is old und obsolete, priests are aristocrats, wealthy oppressors of the people, the Church but another form of wanton tyranny.

Let us by all means have a new religion.

Already something has been done to destroy the old! To destroy! always to destroy! Churches have been ransacked, altars spoliated, tombs desecrated, priests and curates murdered: but than is not enough,