“I knew that,” said Bompard; and as they smiled, he added: “Par-fait-emain, gentlemen! I was there; I have just come from there.”
“And you didn’t mention it before!”
“Why should I? No one ever believes me. I think it is my agsent,” he added resignedly and with a candid air, the fun of which was lost in the prevailing excitement.
Roumestan a Cabinet Minister!
“Ah, my boys, what a shifty, smart fellow the chief is!” Lappara kept saying, throwing himself back in his chair with his legs near the ceiling. “Hasn’t he played his cards well!”
Rochemaure looked up indignant:
“Don’t talk of smartness and shiftiness, my friend; Roumestan is conscientiousness itself. He goes straight ahead like a bullet—”
“In the first place, there are no bullets nowadays, my child—only shells; and shells do this—” and with the tip of his boot he indicated the curving course of a trajectory:
“Scandal-monger!”
“Idiot!”