“I hope England will have the sense to keep out of it,” said Berthe; “she would be sure to get the worst of it, fighting single-handed, as she would do now.”
“That’s precisely why Russia will take care that she does not keep out of it,” remarked the Austrian.
“And what would Russia gain by England’s being worsted?”
“She would gain the satisfaction of paying off old scores that have rankled in her side these fifteen years. Do you fancy that she has forgotten that little episode in the Crimea, or that she is less bent on revenge because she doesn’t blast and blow and wake her enemy’s suspicions by threatening to annihilate her and so forth? Not a bit of it! Russia doesn’t boast and brag and put her victim on the qui vive; but quietly holds her tongue, and keeps her temper, and bides her time. When she is ready—and the day is not, perhaps, very remote—she will pick a fight with England; and the day the war is proclaimed, every pope and peasant in Holy Russia will light a candle to his holy images; and when the news comes in that England is thrashed, they will light as many as will illuminate the whole of Europe.”
“Après?” I said.
“Après what, madame?”
“When they have thrashed her, as you say, what will they do with her?”
“Do with her? Annex her.”
He looked me straight in the face without a smile on his; but I could not believe he was speaking seriously, and I burst out laughing.
“The position of the conquered territory might offer some difficulties in the way of annexation,” I said, presently; “but we will assume that the obliging Providence of pious King William interferes in behalf of his Muscovite brother, and overcomes all obstacles by land or by sea, and that the doughty little island is constituted a colony of the czar’s dominion: what would he do with it? What earthly use would it be to him?”