"Order another pair of the fellow!"
Hatzfeldt returned with a shrug and a rueful look:
"He lives in Paris—Rue de Lafayette. And Your Excellency is going to have Paris bombarded!"
Said Bismarck, his great frame shaken by internal laughter:
"The fellows who write the newspaper articles out of their own heads know a great deal better than that.... According to them, I am a humanitarian—altruistic to imbecility."
"But we, who only write to Your Excellency's dictation, know Your Excellency better than they!"
The injury to his immaculate foot coverings, and the impending destruction of his bootmaker's establishment, incensed Hatzfeldt to the point of an imprudent retort.
The granite face turned. The heavy regard rested upon him. With his characteristic stutter—a signal as warning to those who knew him as the rattle of the crotalus hidden in the brake, the Minister said:
"So I am not a philanthropist, or a—or an apostle of light and sweetness. I would prefer to build an Empire with the fallen towers of the modern Babylon?..."
Hatzfeldt bowed with the grace inherited from the Russian Princess, his mother. The Minister went on in a lighter tone: