"Algeria!"
The journalist raised his head and hastily turned.
"Ah! Louis, is it you?" he said, cordially extending his hand; "I'm glad you've come. But why did I not hear you?"
"For two reasons, my dear Armand," said the visitor, seating himself in an editorial chair: "one, that I came in by the private entrance, and the other, that you were too zealously engaged in cursing the recent appointment of the King to hear anything short of a salvo of artillery."
"Ah! that cursed appointment! What next I wonder? Thank God, the old man has no more sons to make governors, although he'll never be satisfied till each one of them has a crown on his head, by his own right or the right of a wife."
"And what care we whom the boys marry, so long as marriage takes them out of France? Montpensier can find favor in the eyes of the Spanish Infanta, Christina's sister, and thus balk England; be it so, yes, be it so, especially since it can't be helped or prevented."
"But this affair of Algeria, Louis—"
"Is a very different affair you would say. No doubt, no doubt. As to Algeria, I have always viewed it as a very costly bauble for France, 'an opera-box' as the Duke of Broglie once said, 'rather too expensive for France.'"
"But then it has been a splendid arena for French valor. It has given the rough old Bugeaud a Marshal's bâton, and has made the gallant Lamoricière, his sworn foe, a general officer, thanks to his own intrepid conduct and the court influence of his brother-in-law, Thiers."
"In the late dispatch appear the names of some new candidates for advancement, I perceive."