"I have thought of that; but my mother will like this work for me. The business she disliked."
"Then take it, if it is offered, as I am sure it will be." "He is very quiet about Carteaux," thought Schmidt. "Something will happen soon. I did say from the first that I would not desire to be inside of that Jacobin's skin."
The day after, a brief note called De Courval to the Department of State.
The modest building which then housed the Secretary and his affairs was a small dwelling-house on High Street, No. 379, as the old numbers ran.
No mark distinguished it as the vital center of a nation's foreign business. René had to ask a passer-by for the direction.
For a brief moment De Courval stood on the outer step before the open door. A black servant was asleep on a chair within the sanded entry.
The simplicity and poverty of a young nation, just of late having set up housekeeping, were plainly to be read in the office of the Department of State. Two or three persons went in or came out.
Beside the step an old black woman was selling peanuts. René's thoughts wandered for a moment from his Norman home to a clerk's place in the service of a new country.
"How very strange!"—he had said so to Schmidt, and now recalled his laughing reply: "We think we play the game of life, René, but the banker Fate always wins. His dice are loaded, his cards are marked." The German liked to puzzle him. "And yet," reflected De Courval, "I can go in or go home." He said to himself: "Surely I am free,—and, after all, how little it means for me! I am to translate letters." He roused the snoring negro, and asked, "Where can I find Mr. Randolph?" As the drowsy slave was assembling his wits, a notably pleasant voice behind René said: "I am Mr. Randolph, at your service. Have I not the pleasure to see the Vicomte de Courval?"