“I can offer you, at least, a good cigar,” said the Minister, as he selected with great care two from a number on a silver plateau before him. “These, I think, you will find recommendable; they are grown for myself at Cuba, and prepared after a receipt only known to one family.”
In all this there was a dignified civility, not at all like the impertinent freedom of his manner in the morning. He never, besides, addressed me as Mr. Paynter; in fact, he did not advert to a name at all, not giving me the slightest pretext for that reprisal I had come so charged with; and, as to opening the campaign myself, I 'd as soon have commenced acquaintance with a tiger by a pull at his tail. We were now alone; the servants had retired, and there we sat, silently smoking our cigars in apparent ease, but one of us, at least, in a frame of mind the very opposite to tranquillity.
What a rush and conflict of thought was in my head! Why had not she dined with us? Was her position such as that the presence of a stranger became an embarrassment? Good heaven! was I to suppose this, that, and the other? What was there in this man that so imposed on me, that when I wanted to speak I only could sigh, and that I felt his presence like some overpowering spell? It was that calm, self-contained, quiet manner—cold rather than austere, courteous without cordiality—that chilled me to the very marrow of my bones. Lecture him on the private moralities of his life! ask him to render me an account of his actions! address him as Bluebottle!—
“With such tobacco as that, one can drink Bordeaux,” said he. “Help yourself.”
And I did help myself,—freely, repeatedly. I drank for courage, as a man might drink from thirst or fever, or for strength in a moment of fainting debility. The wine was exquisite, and my heart beat more forcibly, and I felt it.
I cannot follow very connectedly the course of events; I neither know how the conversation glided into politics, nor what I said on that subject. As to the steps by which I succeeded in obtaining his Excellency's confidence, I know as little as a man does of the precise moment in which he is wet through in a Scotch mist. I have a dim memory of talking in a very dictatorial voice, and continually referring to my “entrance into public life,” with reference to what Peel “said,” and what the Duke “told me.”
“What's the use of writing home?” said his Excellency, in a desponding voice. “For the last five years I have called attention to what is going on here; nobody minds, nobody heeds it. Open any blue-book you like, and will you find one solitary despatch from Hesse-Kalbbratonstadt?”
“I cannot call one to mind.”
“Of course you can't. Would you believe it, when the Zeringer party went out, and the Schlaffdorfers came in, I was rebuked—actually rebuked—for sending off a special messenger with the news? And then came out a despatch in cipher, which being interpreted contained this stupid doggerel:—
“'Strange that men difference should be
Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee.'