To hear her was as good as wine, and his heart came out on a genial chuckle.  ’Ay, the choice you have made is not, by heaven, so bad.  Sigismund Alvan’s wife shall take the foremost place of all.  Look at me.’  He lifted his head to the highest on his shoulders, widening his eagle eyes.  He was now thoroughly restored and in his own upper element, expansive after the humiliating contraction of his man’s vanity under the glances of a girl.  ’Do you take me for one who could be content with the part of second?  I will work and do battle unceasingly, but I will have too the prize of battle to clasp it, savour it richly.  I was not fashioned to be the lean meek martyr of a cause, not I. I carry too decisive a weight in the balance to victory.  I have a taste for fruits, my fairest!  And Republics, my bright Lutetia, can give you splendid honours.’  He helped her to realize this with the assuring splendour of his eyes.

’"Bride of the Elect of the People!” is not that as glorious a title, think you, as queen of an hereditary sovereign mumbling of God’s grace on his worm-eaten throne?  I win that seat by service, by the dedication of this brain to the people’s interests.  They have been ground to the dust, and I lift them, as I did a persecuted lady in my boyhood.  I am the soldier of justice against the army of the unjust.  But I claim my reward.  If I live to fight, I live also to enjoy.  I will have my station.  I win it not only because I serve, but because also I have seen, have seen ahead, seen where all is dark, read the unwritten—­ because I am soldier and prophet.  The brain of man is Jove’s eagle and his lightning on earth—­the title to majesty henceforth.  Ah! my fairest; entering the city beside me, and the people shouting around, she would not think her choice a bad one?’

Clotilde made sign and gave some earnest on his arm of ecstatic hugging.

’We may have hard battles, grim deceptions, to go through before that day comes,’ he continued after a while.  ’The day is coming, but we must wait for it, work on.  I have the secret of how to head the people—­to put a head to their movement and make it irresistible, as I believe it will be beneficent.  I set them moving on the lines of the law of things.  I am no empty theorizer, no phantasmal speculator; I am the man of science in politics.  When my system is grasped by the people, there is but a step to the realization of it.  One step.  It will be taken in my time, or acknowledged later.  I stand for index to the people of the path they should take to triumph—­must take, as triumph they must sooner or later:  not by the route of what is called Progress—­pooh!  That is a middle-class invention to effect a compromise.  With the people the matter rests with their intelligence! meanwhile my star is bright and shines reflected.’

‘I notice,’ she said, favouring him with as much reflection as a splendid lover could crave for, ’that you never look down, you never look on the ground, but always either up or straight before you.’