As soon as she left Madame Marneffe, Lisbeth hurried off to Monsieur
Rivet, and found him in his office.
"Well, my dear Monsieur Rivet," she began, when she had bolted the
door of the room. "You were quite right. Those Poles! They are low
villains--all alike, men who know neither law nor fidelity."
"And who want to set Europe on fire," said the peaceable Rivet, "to
ruin every trade and every trader for the sake of a country that is
all bog-land, they say, and full of horrible Jews, to say nothing of
the Cossacks and the peasants--a sort of wild beasts classed by
mistake with human beings. Your Poles do not understand the times we
live in; we are no longer barbarians. War is coming to an end, my dear
mademoiselle; it went out with the Monarchy. This is the age of
triumph for commerce, and industry, and middle-class prudence, such as
were the making of Holland.
"Yes," he went on with animation, "we live in a period when nations
must obtain all they need by the legal extension of their liberties
and by the pacific action of Constitutional Institutions; that is what
the Poles do not see, and I hope----
"You were saying, my dear?--" he added, interrupting himself when he
saw from his work-woman's face that high politics were beyond her
comprehension.
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