"As a boy, I always preferred the apples that hung on the highest branches. They were bigger and sweeter and rosier than the others, though in stealing them I risked both my breeches and my neck. Well! To be plain, there are two apples just now that I particularly covet: the Bombardment—and the Proclamation of the Emperor of Germany from the Tuileries...." He added: "The via media is not the surest road to an arrangement that shall be lasting. The most convincing arguments are uttered by the iron mouths of big guns!"
They had emerged from the shrubbery at the bottom of the garden. The patch of green still spread upon the eastern boundary wall, where the water trickled down. The aquatic plants had been weeded, and the tiny pond cleaned out by Breagh under the supervision of his Infanta, but the pipe remained unsoldered because the plumber's men had gone to the War. Thus the Satyr's mouth remained dry, though the chuckle still sounded in the Satyr's throat.
Madame Charles had been standing near the mask as the Minister and his courtly First Secretary stepped into the open. She started slightly, glanced round, bent her head, and limped painfully away.
Said the Chancellor, barely glancing after the awkward, misshapen figure:
"I hope that it has not occurred to Madame Charles to look over the garden wall!"
Hatzfeldt's eyebrows went up in mild surprise. He objected:
"It would hardly be possible. The wall must be eight feet high, and how in the world could a woman, elderly and with that distressing deformity——"
The laugh that shook the great figure beside him puzzled as much as the utterance.
"She is a daughter of Eve—and it would be possible, by putting a toe in the jaws of yonder grinning gentleman, to ascertain that I have had two sentries posted on the other side of this wall. Listen!..."
He rapped on the masonry with the walking stick he habitually carried, and an answering rap came from the other side.