“Come, my lord!” jokingly rejoined the Prince-President, “it’s not meet for you to be merry. John Bull has an easy part to play in this grand game!”
“Easy, you call it? He’s got to provide the stakes—the monisch. And, after all, what does he gain by it?”
“What does he gain by it? Pardieu! You talk that way in memory of your late scare by the Chartists? Foi d’honnête homme! if I hadn’t played special constable for him, you, cher vicomte, instead of being here as a plenipotentiary, might have been this day enjoying my hospitality as an exile!”
“Ha—ha—ha! Ha—ha—ha!”
Grave Sclave, and graver Teuton—Russia, Prussia, and Austria—took part in the laugh; all three delighted with this joke at the Englishman’s expense.
But their débonnaire fellow-conspirator felt no spite at his discomfiture; else he might have retorted by saying:
“But for John Bull, my dear Louis Napoleon, and that service you pretend to make light of, even the purple cloak of your great uncle, descending as if from the skies, and flouted in the eyes of France, might not have lifted you into the proud position you now hold—the chair of a President, perhaps to be yet transformed into the throne of an Emperor!”
But the Englishman said naught of this. He was too much interested in the hoped-for transformation to make light of it just then; and instead of giving rejoinder, he laughed loud as any of them.
A few more glasses of Moët and Madeira, with a “tip” of Tokay to accommodate the Austrian Field-Marshal, another regalia smoked amidst more of the same kind of persiflage, and the party separated.
Two only remained—Napoleon and his English guest.