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'I am going to fling my royalty and empire on the table and declare at once I don't mean to haggle. It's haggling about rights has been the devil in human affairs, for always. I am going to stop this nonsense. Firmin halted abruptly. 'But, sir! he cried. The king stopped six yards ahead of him and looked back at his adviser's perspiring visage.
"What is it they really want? A box for to-night?" M. Firmin Richard told his secretary to send Box Five on the grand tier to Mm. Debienne and Poligny, if it was not sold. It was not. It was sent off to them. Debienne lived at the corner of the Rue Scribe and the Boulevard des Capucines; Poligny, in the Rue Auber.
The king then summoned Firmin in order to make a short note of a number of things that he had said during the day. But after about twenty minutes' work the sweet sleepiness of the mountain air overcame him, and he dismissed Firmin and went to bed and fell asleep at once, and slept with extreme satisfaction. He had had an active, agreeable day. Section 5
Lovers, innumerable lovers, have caressed amidst this golden broom.... He meditated over a busy mouthful of bread and cheese. 'We ought to have brought a tankard for that beer, he said. Firmin produced a folding aluminium cup, and the king was pleased to drink. 'I wish, sir, said Firmin suddenly, 'I could induce you at least to delay your decision
Those words froze me, and I shivered as if some phantoms were appearing among the trees and showing me the place that had been marked out for me by Destiny, and I felt inclined to jump from the carriage and to run to the river, which was calling to me yonder in a maternal voice, and inviting me to an eternal sleep, eternal repose, but Elaine called out to the coachman: "We will go home, Firmin; drive as fast as you can!"
'Do you really think, Firmin, that I am here as as an infernal politician to put my crown and my flag and my claims and so forth in the way of peace? That little Frenchman is right. You know he is right as well as I do. Those things are over. We we kings and rulers and representatives have been at the very heart of the mischief.
The last day our route lay chiefly through water meadows, and by 9.30 we had reached our detraining station Noyelles whence after a hot breakfast we marched ten miles to our destination St Firmin near the mouth of the Somme. Our transport had already been here about a week, and we found excellent quarters in the long straggling village.
"What way?" said the millionaire. The Duke did not answer. He put his hands in his pockets and walked impatiently up and down the hall. Germaine sat down on a chair. Sonia put her hands on the back of a couch, and leaned forward, watching him. Firmin stood by the door, whither he had retired to be out of the reach of his excited master, with a look of perplexity on his stolid face.
It is as if he had no sense of it at all. He tells amusing trivialities about his cousin Wilhelm and his secretary Firmin, he pokes fun at the American president, who was, indeed, rather a little accident of the political machine than a representative American, and he gives a long description of how he was lost for three days in the mountains in the company of the only Japanese member, a loss that seems to have caused no serious interruption of the work of the council....
Firmin shrugged his shoulders and assumed an expression of despair. Meanwhile, he conveyed, one must eat. For a time neither spoke, and the king ate and turned over in his mind the phrases of the speech he intended to make to the conference. By virtue of the antiquity of his crown he was to preside, and he intended to make his presidency memorable.
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