Thus in Marcasse's sudden resolution there was as much revolutionary
enthusiasm as love of adventure. For a long time the dormouse and
polecat had seemed to him overfeeble enemies for his restless valour,
even as the granary floor seemed to afford too narrow a field. Every
day he read the papers of the previous day in the servants' hall of
the houses he visited; and it appeared to him that this war in America,
which was hailed as the awakening of the spirit of justice and liberty
in the New World, ought to produce a revolution in France. It is true
he had a very literal notion of the way in which ideas were to cross the
seas and take possession of the minds of our continent. In his dreams he
used to see an army of victorious Americans disembarking from numberless
ships, and bringing the olive branch of peace and the horn of plenty to
the French nation. In these same dreams he beheld himself at the head
of a legion of heroes returning to Varenne as a warrior, a legislator, a
rival of Washington, suppressing abuses, cutting down enormous fortunes,
assigning to each proletarian a suitable share, and, in the midst of his
far-reaching and vigorous measures, protecting the good and fair-dealing
nobles, and assuring an honourable existence to them. Needless to say,
the distress inseparable from all great political crises never entered
into Marcasse's mind, and not a single drop of blood sullied the
romantic picture which Patience had unrolled before his eyes.
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