The Minister frowned at him, and made a quick gesture of one hand toward the window.
“So long,” pursued the Englishman, placidly, “as the trains start punctually, and there is not actually grape-shot in the streets, and one may count upon one’s dinner at the hour, one form of government in this country seems to me to be as good as another, Monsieur le Ministre. A Bourbon Monarchy or an Orleans Monarchy, or a Republic, or—well, an Empire, Monsieur le Ministre.”
“Mon Dieu! have you come here to tell me this?” cried the Minister, impatiently, glancing over his shoulder toward the window, and with one hand already stretched out toward the little bell standing on his desk.
“Yes,” answered Turner, leaning forward to draw the bell out of reach. He nodded his head with a friendly smile, and his fat cheeks shook. “Yes, and other things as well. Some of those other matters are perhaps even more worthy of your earnest attention. It is worth your while to listen. More especially, as you are paid for it—by the hour.”
He laughed inside himself, with a hollow sound, and placidly crossed his legs.
“Yes; I came to tell you, firstly, that the present form of government, and, er—any other form which may evolve from it—”
“Oh!—proceed, monsieur!” exclaimed the Minister, hastily, while the man in the recess of the window turned and looked over his shoulder at John Turner’s profile with a smile, not unkind, on his sphinx-like face.
“—has the inestimable advantage of my passive approval. That is why I am here, in fact. I should be sorry to see it upset.”
He broke off, and turned laboriously in his chair to look toward the window, as if the gaze of the expressionless eyes there had tickled the back of his neck like a fly. But by the time the heavy banker had got round, the curtain had fallen again in its original folds.
“—by a serious Royalist plot,” concluded Turner, in his thick, deliberate way.