“The Lord alone knows,” replied the Scotchman, who had never set foot in his country, but had acquired elsewhere the prudent habit of never answering a question. “France doesn’t, I am sure of that. I am thinking there will be events, though, before long, Colville. Will there not, now?”
Colville looked at him with an open smile.
“You mean,” he said, slowly, “the Prince President.”
“That is what he calls himself at present. I’m wondering how long. Eh! man. He is just pouring money into the country from here, from America, from Austria—from wherever he can get it.”
“Why is he doing that?”
“You must ask somebody who knows him better than I do. They say you knew him yourself once well enough, eh?”
“He is not a man I have much faith in,” said Colville, vaguely. “And France has no faith in him at all.”
“So I’m told. But France—well, does France know what she wants? She mostly wants something without knowing what it is. She is like a woman. It’s excitement she wants, perhaps. And she will buy it at any cost, and then find afterward she has paid too dear for it. That is like a woman, too. But it isn’t another Bonaparte she wants, I am sure of that.”
“So am I,” answered Colville, with a side glance toward Barebone, a mere flicker of the eyelids.
“Not unless it is a Napoleon of that ilk.”