"I congratulate M. Tessier! Can your servant cook, Madame?"
The shrill voice responded:
"Monseigneur must be judge of that when he has tried her dishes. She does her best—the excellent Jeannette! But if Monseigneur is to be served as befits his state and consequence ... I should prefer to cook for him myself!"
"So!" He leaned one elbow on the table, meditatively regarding the speaker, and the lambent blue flame of humor danced and flickered in his eyes: "Since we do not require you and your domestic to leave the house—only to confine yourselves to the two smaller bedrooms on the second floor—it may be as well that you should assist to a degree in the kitchen.... But for all that does not require women we have our servants—you understand? And the chef attached to the service of the Prussian Chancellery is extremely competent. He is—rather a personage in his way!"
Bismarck-Böhlen sniggered in his characteristic fashion.
White Shawl shrilled, gesticulating with a hand that resembled a claw:
"If your Prussian cooks better than I do—or even the chef of our gredin of an Emperor, he may call me a Bonapartist and I will not slap his face!"
The Minister drew his well-shaped sunbrowned hand over his mustache, perhaps to hide a smile at the epithet. He asked with his powerful glance intent upon Madame Charles Tessier:
"So, then, you are not a lover of the Bonapartes? What is your party? Are you Republican or Monarchist?"
She shrieked with raucous energy: