"It seems," continued the Minister, "that we all cost the town too much to keep, the chief offenders being the grand ducal and princely personages at the Hôtel des Réservoirs. Of course, one knows that the Tinsel Rabble eat and drink a great deal more than they require, and waste much more than they consume. But to a Frenchman, one cannot admit as much. So I shall tell the Mayor that he must apply to the French Government at Tours for permission to raise a substantial money loan, and as M. Thiers has only just come from there, he would naturally buttonhole the old gentleman if he encountered him. Which—as our plump, neatly shaved old Professor is as timid as a hare and as soft as a baby—would discompose him very horribly...." He continued: "He is dying to make peace with us, because there will soon be famine in Paris. Imagine how I caught him out when I told him yesterday: 'Monsieur, you have only visited the city for a few hours. We know better about the contents of its magazines than you do. They have ample provisions to last until the end of January....' What a look of incredulity! I had only been feeling his pulse, as it were.... His amazement told me what I most wanted to know. What a man to make a bargain about an armistice, an invalidy civilian, who cannot conceal his feelings! Who lets himself be put out of countenance and pumped!—actually pumped!"
He turned aside to cough and hawk and expectorate copiously.... "There!" he said, wiping his mustache vigorously with a large white cambric handkerchief. "You see what it is to have a stomach as sensitive as mine is.... That injustice done me in the Berliner Zeitung with reference to the bombardment has caused an overflow of bile, by which I was already incommoded. Thiers will be certain to remain closeted with me for two hours. He is nothing if not expansive and flowery, and redundant. I shall not be able to get on horseback before three o'clock, and we dine at six." He went on, punctuating the sentence with more coughs and hawkings: "And as our table is to be graced—tchah!—by a huge trout pasty, a love gift to the Chancellor of the—hah!—Confederation, from a Berlin restaurant keeper who throws into the bargain—ahah!—a cask of Vienna March beer and his photograph, taken with his wife and—brr'r!"
He turned aside and spat vigorously, before ending, resuming, as he used the big white handkerchief:
"One would desire to do justice to a gift so welcome.... More bile!... I spat like this half the night through.... Decidedly I am not as well as when we galloped along the highroads with the Great Headquarters Staff.... I have wondered: Do I eat too much? Does this sedentary life conduce to indigestion?" He spat again, and answered himself: "How can it be so, when I breakfast on a couple of eggs with dry toast, and a cup of tea without milk? I don't lunch—lunch is a mockery of a meal—but in the evening I make a hearty dinner. With beer and champagne in plenty, and wash all down with half a dozen cups of tea. Then I go to bed—as you know, never before midnight. There's a doze—and I waken up with my brain as bright as daylight—all sorts of things running through it, and my mouth full of this bitter—faugh!"
"Your Excellency will need a fresh handkerchief," said Hatzfeldt, slightly shuddering, as the Chancellor vigorously crumpled the soiled cambric into a ball. "Shall I send Your Excellency's servant to fetch another?"
"No, no! As it happens, I have sent Grams out. And Engelberg is busy. There is Madame Charles's factotum!" He called in French: "Hola, Jean Jacques! Approach, my brave young man!"
His full blue eyes, their whites now red-veined and biliously injected, had turned to where the strongly built young male servant was still sweeping the steps of the rear of the house. Cropped to the scalp, you saw the fellow attired in a well-worn morning jacket of striped linen, a blue waistcoat and tight blue cloth trousers, yellow piped at the side seams. Summoned by an imperative word and gesture, he knocked the damp leaves off his broom, stood it up against the side of the conservatory, and shambled to where the Chancellor was standing, muttering with a downcast air and a furtive, sulky look:
"Ouiche, Monseigneur?... What is it Monseigneur desires?"
Said the Minister, with a smile that curved the great mustache and showed the white, square teeth that a young man might have envied:
"Monseigneur desires that without delay the brave Jean Jacques would betake him to the kitchen, and desire Madame Charles Tessier of her goodness to favor Monseigneur with a clean handkerchief.... Perhaps two would be better.... Ask for two, Jean Jacques, and compel thy legs to rapid motion, for to croquer le marmot is not a favorite pastime with Monseigneur! Comprehend you?"