Chapter Twenty Three.
The Programme of the Great Powers.
In a chamber of the Tuileries five men were seated around a table.
Before them were decanters and glasses, wine bottles of varied shapes, an épergne filled with choice flowers, silver trays loaded with luscious fruits, nuts, olives—in short, all the materials of a magnificent dessert.
A certain odour of roast meats, passing off under the bouquet of the freshly-decanted wines, told of a dinner just eaten, the dishes having been carried away.
The gentlemen had taken to cigars, and the perfume of finest Havana tobacco was mingling with the aroma of the fruit and flowers. Smoking, sipping, and chatting with light nonchalance, at times even flippantly, one could ill have guessed the subject of their conversation.
And yet it was of so grave and secret a nature, that the butler and waiters had been ordered not to re-enter the room—the double door having been close-shut on their dismissal—while in the corridor outside a guard was kept by two soldiers in grenadier uniform.
The five men, thus cautious against being overheard, were the representatives of the Five Great Powers of Europe—England, Austria, Russia, Prussia, and France.
They were not the ordinary ambassadors who meet to arrange some trivial diplomatic dispute, but plenipotentiaries with full power to shape the destinies of a continent.
And it was this that had brought together that five-cornered conclave, consisting of an English Lord, an Austrian Field-Marshal, a Russian Grand Duke, a distinguished Prussian diplomatist, and the President of France—host of the other four.