“A H. V. il cedera;
De S. C. l. d. partira;
Eh nauf errera,
Decide a Gorix.
“Every letter is there!” [He repeats it.] “A Henry cinq cedera (his crown of course); de Saint-Cloud partira; en nauf (that’s an old French word for skiff, vessel, felucca, corvette, anything you like) errera—”
Dutocq. “What a tissue of absurdities! How can the King cede his crown to Henry V., who, according to your nonsense, must be his grandson, when Monseigneur le Dauphin is living. Are you prophesying the Dauphin’s death?”
Bixiou. “What’s Gorix, pray?—the name of a cat?”
Colleville [provoked]. “It is the archaeological and lapidarial abbreviation of the name of a town, my good friend; I looked it out in Malte-Brun: Goritz, in Latin Gorixia, situated in Bohemia or Hungary, or it may be Austria—”
Bixiou. “Tyrol, the Basque provinces, or South America. Why don’t you set it all to music and play it on the clarionet?”
Godard [shrugging his shoulders and departing]. “What utter nonsense!”
Colleville. “Nonsense! nonsense indeed! It is a pity you don’t take the trouble to study fatalism, the religion of the Emperor Napoleon.”
Godard [irritated at Colleville’s tone]. “Monsieur Colleville, let me tell you that Bonaparte may perhaps be styled Emperor by historians, but it is extremely out of place to refer to him as such in a government office.”
Bixiou [laughing]. “Get an anagram out of that, my dear fellow.”