He went on informing himself, with a quiet side-glance to right and left, of the effect his communication was producing:
"Perhaps you do not know Straz—a man with the profile and curls of one of M. Layard's man-god bulls of Nineveh, a living tool that might have been tempered in the workshop of an Alexander Borgia, or a Catherine de Medici——"
He stopped to fill one of his great crystal goblets from the champagne-bottle that stood beside him. Moltke, indifferent to the dishes that stood temptingly within reach, had been wiping the inside of his wig dry with his handkerchief. Now, oblivious of the wig, and crumpling it with the handkerchief into a ball, he was squeezing the ball between his narrow palms as he listened to the speaker. Von Roon, who had been busy upon some sweetbreads cooked in sour cream, paused in the act of helping himself again largely.
"So—so—this fellow—Straz——" The Chancellor stuttered now and then, and he did it here effectively—"This uns-scrupulous f-fellow of whom I am t-talking——" He drained the big glass to the dregs, wiped his mustache carefully, and began delicately unfolding more thin sheets of paper from the small but pregnant wad.
"Ah, yes, where was I? Th-this morning, the twelfth of July, the originals of these three telegrams, which are not in cipher, were sent from Sigmaringen by Prince Antony. The first, to Marshal Prim, at Madrid, withdraws his son from the candidacy. The second, to Olozaga, recapitulates the wording of this. The third, ostensibly addressed to the principal journals of Berlin and Germany, and to the German Submarine Telegraphic Agencies by order of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern, abandons all pretensions to the Spanish scepter, and restores to Spain her freedom of initiative."
Von Roon bellowed like a nine-inch siege gun:
"What May-madness has the confounded old billy-goat?"
The Chief of the Great General Staff put on his wig, and said, folding his lean arms upon his sunken chest:
"How has he at Paris managed to frighten the old man?"
The Chancellor said, fixing his full, powerful eyes upon the light ones twinkling through their wise old puckers: