CONVENTION-AL POLITENESS.
Madame France (with effusion)—
"And doth not a meeting like this make amends?"
I trust I have quoted with textual accuracy your so charming, and to the actual situation happily appropriate poet?
Mr. Bull (avec empressement). It does—or perhaps I should say doth—indeed, Madam. As to the bit from the bard—well, may its appropriateness never be less! How much pleasanter than the grim dictum of an elder rhymester, who referred to your people as those
"Whom nature hath predestined for our foes,
And made it bliss and virtue to oppose."
Madame France. The barbarian! Oppose, indeed! Why should we oppose each other, dear Monsieur Bull?
Mr. Bull. Why, indeed?
Madame France. True, your bellicose Lord Palmerston did oppose my great Ferdinand's grand idea, and that from motives the most insular and unenlightened. Just as some few poltroons in your sea-girt isle at present oppose the Channel Tunnel, which yet, in good time, will doubtless become as benign an actuality as the Suez Canal itself.
Mr. Bull. Humph! Pam had perhaps his reasons, which, in the light of subsequent events, one must admit not to have been without their weight.
Madame France. Oh, Monsieur Bull! "Greater freedom of intercourse between nations is the tendency of our industrial and social development, and the tide of human intelligence cannot be arrested by vague fears." So I read in a pamphlet on the Tunnel. How true, is it not?
Mr. Bull. Doubtless; as true as that the tide of invasion could not be arrested by cosmopolitan cant.
Madame France. Invasion? Fie, Monsieur Bull! In the new lexicon of international amity there is no such word.
Mr. Bull. If the excision of the word could absolutely abolish the possibility of the thing, all would be well—between you and Germany, for instance.
Madame France. Sacre-e-e! I beg pardon. Expletives should also be banished from civility's lexicon. But Bismarck is a monstre, a miserable,—whereas you——! [Bows sweetly.
Mr. Bull. Inarticulate flattery, Madam, is irresistible—and unanswerable. The renewal—if, indeed, it was ever really interrupted—of the entente cordiale between us, is a blessed boon not to be matched in value by a hundred—Tunnels!
Madame France. And this Convention is the sign and seal of that renewal, n'est-ce-pas? I knew you never intended to stop in Egypt.
Mr. Bull. Longer than was necessary—assuredly not, Madam. And I was certain the New Hebrides had no real charms to permanently arrest your feet.
Madame France. Though a pied à terre in Raraitea, of course—you comprehend, Monsieur!
Mr. Bull. Perfectly. The questions of Egypt and the New Hebrides, of our post near the Pyramids, and your Protectorate near Tahiti, have, of course, no real connection.
Madame France. Obviously, Monsieur! Are they not dealt with in separate Conventions?
Mr. Bull. Ah! if all quarrels—I beg pardon, political problems—could as easily be settled by a Conventional Act!
Madame France. How welcome to you, Monsieur, to all parties in your Parliament, to the "rescuers" as to the "retirers," to your Lord Chamberlain, as well as to your Grand Old Gladstone, must be the prospect of an early, not to say immediate withdrawal from the Land of the Pharaohs! Surely the fugitive Israelites of old never left it with such pleased promptitude as you will—"scuttle out" of it! Have I accurate memory of the Beaconsfieldian phrase, Monsieur?
Mr. Bull. Your memory, Madam, is miraculous. The forty centuries—or, however, many more there may happen to be there at the moment of my departure—will doubtless, in the words of your own great phraser, "look down from the Pyramids" with emotions not less marked than my own—and yours, Madam.
Madame France. My emotions at the present moment—and yours, I hope, Monsieur—are simply of supreme joy at the so happy removal of difficulties and the so complete restoration of amity between us by this charming Convention, so satisfactory in its actual terms, so much more so in its promises for the future. I felicitate you, dear Monsieur Bull.
Mr. Bull. And I, Madam, reciprocate your felicitations. (Aside.) It pleases her, apparently, and I do not see that it can possibly hurt me! [Left bowing.
