"You are as pious as the King to-night," said the Chancellor, laughing heartily. "And your God is the God of Battles, we all know!"
"Yes, yes, the Friend Above does not forget this old fellow!" said the Field-Marshal simply. "The thousand-ton Krupp gun—whose acquaintance the Parisians made at the Exposition of 1867,—has been waiting ever since to make upon them an impression of a different kind! Like the gun, I have bided my time, as the Scotch say. Neither the cannon nor myself will last for ever, but to worry is folly! ... Heaven will not let us rust upon the shelf!"
"'Mensch ärgere Dich nicht' is a good proverb," said the Chancellor, "not only for Your Excellency! Chained to my study-table all yesterday and this morning,—horribly handicapped by the absence of my First Secretary Abeken, who is doing duty with the King at Ems.—listening to reports, receiving showers of telegrams, dictating replies in answer to the appeals or expostulations of Foreign Ministers—sending instructions to Ambassadors, and drinking Mühlbrunnen water,—which must not be taken when one is vexed or worried, if one wants it not to play the very devil in one's inside, I chewed the cud of that proverb, 'Man, do not vex thyself!' to keep myself from gnawing my tongue. That official international threat of Gramont, uttered in the session of the Corps Législatif of July 6th,—the filth hurled by the Paris Press—did not cost me a sleepless night. But that, after such insults, the King of Prussia should treat with Benedetti at Ems while the Prussian Foreign Minister remained at Varzin—stuck in my gizzard as though I had swallowed a prickle-burr. It was worse than Olmütz.... I saw nothing but resignation ahead of me!"
Von Roon agreed:
"To me also it seemed a slight not to the Foreign Minister alone—but to His Majesty's Government in your person."
The Field-Marshal added, his wrinkled face lengthening dourly:
"I may tell you—there being no ladies present!—the whole affair acted on me like unripe gooseberries, especially after reading that sentence in the Gaulois, written by a gamin with a finger to his nose...."
Von Boon thundered:
"'La Prusse cane!' Only say black-dose, rather than sour gooseberries, and there you have the effect of the words on me!"
Said the Chancellor, with a twinkle of humor: