'Talleyrand didn't answer any of those questions. Then Boney sidled up to the table and jabs his pen into the ink. Then he shies at the paper again: "My signature alone is useless," he says. "You must have the other two Consuls as well. Sieyes and Roger Ducos must sign. We must preserve the Laws."
'"By the time my friend presents it," says Talleyrand, still looking out of window, "only one signature will be necessary."
'Boney smiles. "It's a swindle," says he, but he signed and pushed the paper across.
'"Give that to the President of the Prize Court at Le Havre," says Talleyrand, "and he will give you back your ship. I will settle for the cargo myself. You have told me how much it cost. What profit did you expect to make on it?"
'Well, then, as man to man, I was bound to warn him that I'd set out to run it into England without troubling the Revenue, and so I couldn't rightly set bounds to my profits.'
'I guessed that all along,' said Puck.
'There was never a Lee to Warminghurst -
That wasn't a smuggler last and first.'
The children laughed.
'It's comical enough now,' said Pharaoh. 'But I didn't laugh then. Says Talleyrand after a minute, "I am a bad accountant and I have several calculations on hand at present. Shall we say twice the cost of the cargo?"
'Say? I couldn't say a word. I sat choking and nodding like a China image while he wrote an order to his secretary to pay me, I won't say how much, because you wouldn't believe it.
'"Oh! Bless you, Abbe! God bless you!" I got it out at last.
'"Yes," he says, "I am a priest in spite of myself, but they call me Bishop now. Take this for my episcopal blessing," and he hands me the paper.
'"He stole all that money from me," says Boney over my shoulder. "A Bank of France is another of the things we must make. Are you mad?" he shouts at Talleyrand.
'"Quite," says Talleyrand, getting up. "But be calm. The disease will never attack you. It is called gratitude. This gentleman found me in the street and fed me when I was hungry."
'"I see; and he has made a fine scene of it, and you have paid him, I suppose. Meantime, France waits. "
'"Oh! poor France!" says Talleyrand. "Good-bye, Candide," he says to me. "By the way," he says, "have you yet got Red Jacket's permission to tell me what the President said to his Cabinet after Monsieur Genet rode away?"
'I couldn't speak, I could only shake my head, and Boney - so impatient he was to go on with his doings - he ran at me and fair pushed me out of the room. And that was all there was to it.'
Pharaoh stood up and slid his fiddle into one of his big skirt-pockets as though it were a dead hare.
'Oh! but we want to know lots and lots more,'said Dan. 'How you got home - and what old Maingon said on the barge - and wasn't your cousin surprised when he had to give back the BERTHE AURETTE, and -'
'Tell us more about Toby!' cried Una.
'Yes, and Red Jacket,' said Dan.
'Won't you tell us any more?' they both pleaded.
Puck kicked the oak branch on the fire, till it sent up a column of smoke that made them sneeze. When they had finished the Shaw was empty except for old Hobden stamping through the larches.
'They gipsies have took two,'he said. "My black pullet and my liddle gingy-speckled cockrel.'
'I thought so,' said Dan, picking up one tail-feather that the old woman had overlooked.
'Which way did they go? Which way did the runagates go?' said Hobden.
'Hobby!' said Una. 'Would you like it if we told Keeper Ridley all your goings and comings?'
