“And a terrible eater, moreover.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Why, at one gulp he swallowed all England.”
“Well, Planchet, the evening before the day on which he swallowed England, if any one had swallowed M. Cromwell?”
“Oh, monsieur, it is one of the axioms of mathematics that the container must be greater than the contained.”
“Very well! That is our affair, Planchet.”
“But M. Cromwell is dead, and his container is now the tomb.”
“My dear Planchet, I see with pleasure that you have not only become a mathematician, but a philosopher.”
“Monsieur, in my grocery business I use much printed paper, and that instructs me.”
“Bravo! You know then, in that case—for you have not learnt mathematics and philosophy without a little history—that after this Cromwell so great, there came one who was very little.”