“What did you want then?”
“The Rhine.”
“Whew! the devil!”
“I should have protested and spoken without finding any echo to my words; I preferred to say nothing.”
“Ah! the Rhine! To have the Rhine! Yes, that is a fine idea. Poetry! poetry!”
“Poetry that our fathers made with cannon and that we shall make again with ideas!”
“My dear colleague,” went on M. Decazes, “we must wait. I, too, want the Rhine. Thirty years ago I said to Louis XVIII.: ‘Sire, I should be inconsolable if I thought I should die without seeing France mistress of the left bank of the Rhine. But before we can talk about that, before we can think of it even, we must beget children.’”
“Well,” I replied, “that was thirty years ago. We have begotten the children.”