"No,"—and there is a coldness in the negative disproportioned to so simple a denial,—"I do not think so. I do not remember such a name. Who is he?"
"A person who is expected to be great in foreign affairs some day or other," says Brandolin. "He will have one qualification rare in an English foreign minister,—daily growing rarer, thanks to the imbecilities of examinations: he knows how to bow and he knows what to say."
"A friend of yours?"
"Oh, no; an acquaintance. He thinks very ill of me."
"Why?"
"Because I do nothing for my country. He thinks he does a great deal when he has fomented a quarrel or received a decoration."
"That is not generous. The world owes much to diplomatists: it will know how much in a few years, when it will be governed by clerks controlled by telephones."
"That is true: I stand corrected. But Gervase and I have few sympathies: none, indeed, except politically, and even there we differ,—his is the Toryism of Peel, mine is the Toryism of the late Lord Derby: there are leagues between the two."
"I know: the one is opportunism; the other is optimate-ism."
"Perhaps," says Brandolin, with a smile, and thinks, meantime, "She knows something about him. What is it?"