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A dead silence of some moments' duration -- during which hosts and guests looked at each other as men might before the outburst of a storm -- then Victor Fargeau, after an exchange of glances with the French admiral, said, in a voice which trembled with angry emotion:
"Milords, I think I am speaking for my comrades as well as myself if I say that we have come too far to be frightened from the accomplishment of our purpose. For my own part, I may say that nothing, not even the fear of that annihilation which the viscount has just threatened, would turn me from my purpose, because I have come to take back that which is mine and France's. These works may be your property, gentlemen, because you have built them with your money and your labour, but the soul which animates them, which makes them a living organism instead of a lifeless mass of brick and stone, the power which you say has enabled you to paralyse the fleets and armies of Europe, that is mine: for I am the son of the man who created it. He left it to me as his last legacy. I have returned to my allegiance to France after doing her what service I could elsewhere.