“But there’s a British Consul in Boulogne.”
“Aye, and a British Foreign Minister, who gives that Consul his instructions; with some queer ideas besides, neither creditable to himself nor his country. I’m speaking of that jaunty diplomat—the ‘judicious bottle-holder,’ who is accustomed to cajole the British public with his blarney about ‘Civis Romanus sum.’”
“True, but does that bear upon our affair?”
“It does—almost directly.”
“In what way? I do not comprehend.”
“Because you’re not up to what’s passing over here—I mean at headquarters—the Tuilleries, or St. Cloud, if you prefer it. There the man—if man he can be called—is ruled by the woman; she in her turn the devoted partisan of Pio Nono and the unprincipled Antonelli.”
“I can understand all that; still I don’t quite see its application, or how the English Foreign Minister can be interested in those you allude to?”
“I do. But for him, not one of the four worthies spoken of would be figuring as they are. In all probability France would still be a republic instead of an empire, wicked as the world ever saw; and Rome another republic—it maybe all Italy—with either Mazzini or Garibaldi at its head. For, certain as you sit there, old boy, it was the judicious bottle-holder who hoisted Nap into an imperial throne, over that Presidential chair, so ungratefully spurned—scurvily kicked behind after it had served his purpose. A fact of which the English people appear to be yet in purblind ignorance! As they are of another, equally notable, and alike misunderstood: that it was this same civis Romanus sum who restored old Pio to his apostolic chair; those red-breeched ruffians, the Zouaves, being but so much dust thrown into people’s eyes—a bone to keep the British bull-dog quiet. He would have growled then, and will yet, when he comes to understand all these transactions; when the cloak of that scoundrelly diplomacy which screens them has rotted into shreds, letting the light of true history shine upon them.”
“Why, Mahon! I never knew you were such a politician! Much less such a Radical!”
“Nothing much of either, old fellow. Only a man who hates tyranny in every shape and form—whether religious or political. Above all, that which owes its existence to the cheapest—the very shabbiest chicanery the world was ever bamboozled with. I like open dealing in all things.”