It was by the help of Egypt that we
gained terms which were remarkably favourable, and especially that we
caused the English to consent to give up the Cape of Good Hope. We did
not wish your people, monsieur, to have any foothold in South Africa,
for history has taught us that the British foothold of one half-century
is the British Empire of the next. It is not your army or your navy
against which we have to guard, but it is your terrible younger son and
your man in search of a career. When we French have a possession across
the seas, we like to sit in Paris and to felicitate ourselves upon it.
With you it is different. You take your wives and your children, and
you run away to see what kind of place this may be, and after that we
might as well try to take that old Square of Bloomsbury away from you.
"Well, it was upon the first of October that the treaty was finally to
be signed. In the morning I was congratulating Monsieur Otto upon the
happy conclusion of his labours. He was a little pale shrimp of a man,
very quick and nervous, and he was so delighted now at his own success
that he could not sit still, but ran about the room chattering and
laughing, while I sat on a cushion in the corner, as I had learned to do
in the East. Suddenly, in came a messenger with a letter which had been
forwarded from Paris.
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