ur."

He laughed inside himself, with a hollow sound, and placidly crossed his
legs.

"Yes; I came to tell you, firstly, that the present form of government,
and, er--any other form which may evolve from it--"

"Oh!--proceed, monsieur!" exclaimed the Minister, hastily, while the man
in the recess of the window turned and looked over his shoulder at John
Turner's profile with a smile, not unkind, on his sphinx-like face.

"--has the inestimable advantage of my passive approval. That is why I
am here, in fact. I should be sorry to see it upset."

He broke off, and turned laboriously in his chair to look toward the
window, as if the gaze of the expressionless eyes there had tickled the
back of his neck like a fly. But by the time the heavy banker had got
round, the curtain had fallen again in its original folds.

"--by a serious Royalist plot," concluded Turner, in his thick,
deliberate way.

"So, assuredly, would any patriot or any true friend of France," said
the Minister, in his best declamatory manner.

"Um--m. That is out of my depth," returned the Englishman, bluntly. "I
paddle about in the shallow water at the edge and pick up what I can,
you understand. I am too fat for a voyant bathing-costume, and the deep
waters beyond, Monsieur le Ministre."

The Minister drummed impatiently on his desk with his five fingers, and
looked at Turner sideways beneath his brows.

"Royalist plots are common enough," he said, tentatively, after a pause.

"Not a Royalist plot with money in it," was the retort. "I dare say an
honest politician, like yourself, is aware that in France it is always
safe to ignore the conspirator who has no money, and always dangerous
to treat with contempt him who jingles a purse. There is only a certain
amount of money in the world, Monsieur le Ministre, and we bankers
usually know where it is. I do not mean the money that the world pours
into its own stomach. That is always afloat--changing hands daily. I
mean the Great Reserves. We watch those, you understand. And if one
of the Great Reserves, or even one of the smaller reserves, moves, we
wonder why it is being moved and we nearly always find out."

"One supposes," said the Minister, hazarding an opinion for the first
time, and he gave it with a sidelong glance toward the window, "that it
is passing from the hands of a financier possessing money into those of
one who has none."

"Precisely. And if a financier possessing money is persuade