Strange indeed were the turns of history! A government with a Socialist saddlemaker at its head was sending to Versailles a peace delegation headed by the Imperial Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau, member of the haughty old nobility who despised the German workers almost as much as he did the French politicians. He and his two hundred and fifty staff members were shut up in a stockade, and crowds came to look at them as they might at creatures in the zoo. The count hated them so that it made him physically ill. When he and his delegation came to the Trianon Palace Hotel to present their credentials, he became deathly pale, and his knees shook so that he could hardly stand. He did not try to speak. The spectacle was painful to the Americans, but Clemenceau and his colleagues gloated openly. “You see!” they said. “These are the old Germans! The 'republic' is just camouflage. The beast wants to get out of his cage.”
Young Lochinvar
I
THE tall and stately Mrs. Emily Chattersworth was going shopping, and called at her friend Beauty's hotel rather early in the morning. “Such a strange thing has happened, my dear,” said she. “Do you remember that young Swiss musician, M. Dalcroze?”
“Yes, very well,” said Beauty, catching her breath.
“I had a visit last night from two officials of the Sûreté. It seems that they are looking for him.”
“What in the world for, Emily?”
“They wouldn't tell me directly, but I could guess from the questions they asked. They think he's a German agent.”
“Oh, my God!” exclaimed Beauty. Almost impossible to conceal the surge of her emotion. “How horrible, Emily!”
“Can you imagine it? He seemed to me such a refined and gentle person.”