"What could he have done?
Patriots, friends, brothers, I ask you, what could he have done ?" The giant had pushed the wine cask aside, it rolled away from under him, and in the fulness of his contempt for Merlin and his impotence, he stood up before them all, strong in his indictment against treasonable incapacity.
"I ask you," he repeated, with a loud oath, "what any patriot would do, what you or I would have done, in the house of a man whom we all _know_ is a traitor to the Republic?
Brothers, friends, Citizen-Deputy Merlin found a heap of burn paper in a grate, he found a letter-case which had obviously contained important documents, and he asks us what he could do!" "Deroulede is too important a man to be tried without proofs.

The whole mob of Paris would have turned on us for having arraigned him, for having dared lay hands upon his sacred person." "Without proofs?
Who said there were no proofs ?" queried Lenoir.
"I found the burnt papers and torn letter-case in the woman's room.

She owned that they were love letters, and that she had denounced Deroulede in order to be rid of him." "Then let me tell you, Citizen-Deputy Merlin, that a true patriot would have found those papers in Deroulede's, and not the woman's room; that in the hands of a faithful servant of the Republic those documents would not all have been destroyed, for he would have 'found' one letter addressed to the Widow Capet, which would have proved conclusively that Citizen-Deputy Deroulede was a traitor.

That is what a true patriot would have done--what I would have done.

_Pardi!_ since Deroulede is so important a personage, since we must all put on kid gloves when we lay hands upon him, then let us fight him with other weapons.