“On the success of a friend. On what we have all seen in the Journal. Is it not true that you have won your suit?”
“I won, yes.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But what, Madame? A bare title, an empty rent-roll.”
“For shame!” she answered. “But I suppose that this is your English phlegm. Is it not a thing to be proud of—an old title? That which money cannot buy and the wisest would fain wear? M. Guizot, what would he not give to be Chien de Race? Your Peel, also?”
“And your Thiers?” he returned, with a sly glance at the little man in the shining glasses.
“He, too! But he has the passion of humanity, which is a title in itself. Whereas you English, turning in your unending circle, one out, one in, one in, one out, are but playing a game—marking time! You have not a desire to go forward!”
“Surely, Princess, you forget our Reform Bill, scarce ten years old.”
“Which bought off your cotton lords and your fat bourgeois, and left the people without leaders and more helpless than before. No, my lord, if your Russell—Lord John, do you call him?—had one jot of M. Thiers’ enthusiasm! Or your Peel—but I look for nothing there!”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I admit,” he said, “that M. Thiers has an enthusiasm beyond the ordinary.”
“You do? Wonderful!”
“But,” with a smile, “it is, I fancy, an enthusiasm of which the object is—M. Thiers!”