‘Say? I couldn’t say a word. I sat choking and nodding like a China image while he wrote an order to his secretary to pay me, I won’t say how much, because you wouldn’t believe it.
‘“Oh! Bless you, abbé! God bless you!” I got it out at last.
‘“Yes,” he says, “I am a priest in spite of myself, but they call me bishop now. Take this for my episcopal blessing,” and he hands me the paper.
‘“He stole all that money from me,” says Boney over my shoulder. “A Bank of France is another of the things we must make. Are you mad?” he shouts at Talleyrand.
‘“Quite,” says Talleyrand, getting up. “But be calm; the disease will never attack you. It is called gratitude. This gentleman found me in the street and fed me when I was hungry.”
‘“I see; and he has made a fine scene of it and you have paid him, I suppose. Meantime, France waits.”
‘“Oh! poor France!” says Talleyrand. “Good-bye, Candide,” he says to me. “By the way,” he says, “have you yet got Red Jacket’s permission to tell me what the President said to his Cabinet after Monsieur Genêt rode away?”
‘I couldn’t speak, I could only shake my head, and Boney—so impatient he was to go on with his doings—he ran at me and fair pushed me out of the room. And that was all there was to it.’
Pharaoh stood up and slid his fiddle into one of his big skirt pockets as though it were a dead hare.
‘Oh! but we want to know lots and lots more,’ said Dan. ‘How you got home—and what old Maingon said on the barge—and wasn’t your cousin surprised when he had to give back the Berthe Aurette, and——’