_Host._ "YES; BUT IT'S RATHER BARE, JUST NOW. I HOPE THE TREES WILL HAVE GROWN A GOOD BIT BEFORE YOU'RE BACK, OLD MAN!"] * * * * * CONVENTION-AL POLITENESS. _Madame France (with effusion)--_ "And doth not a meeting like this make amends?" I trust I have quoted with textual accuracy your so charming, and to the actual situation happily appropriate poet? _Mr. Bull (avec empressement)._ It does--or perhaps I should say doth--indeed, Madam. As to the bit from the bard--well, may its appropriateness never be less! How much pleasanter than the grim dictum of an elder rhymester, who referred to your people as those "Whom nature hath predestined for our foes, And made it bliss and virtue to oppose." _Madame France._ The barbarian! Oppose, indeed! Why should we oppose each other, dear Monsieur BULL? _Mr. Bull._ Why, indeed? _Madame France._ True, your bellicose Lord PALMERSTON did oppose my great FERDINAND'S grand idea, and that from motives the most insular and unenlightened. Just as some few poltroons in your sea-girt isle at present oppose the Channel Tunnel, which yet, in good time, will doubtless become as benign an actuality as the Suez Canal itself. _Mr. Bull._ Humph! PAM had perhaps his reasons, which, in the light of subsequent events, one must admit not to have been without their weight. _Madame France._ Oh, Monsieur BULL! "Greater freedom of intercourse between nations is the tendency of our industrial and social development, and the tide of human intelligence cannot be arrested by _vague fears_." So I read in a pamphlet on the Tunnel. How true, is it not? _Mr. Bull._ Doubtless; as true as that the tide of invasion could not be arrested by cosmopolitan cant. _Madame France._ Invasion? Fie, Monsieur BULL! In the new lexicon of international amity there is no such word. _Mr. Bull._ If the excision of the _word_ could absolutely abolish the possibility of the thing, all would be well--between you and Germany, for instance. _Madame France._ _Sacre-e-e!_ I beg pardon. Expletives should also be banished from civility's lexicon. But BISMARCK is a _monstre_, a _miserable_,--whereas you----! [_Bows sweetly._ _Mr. Bull._ Inarticulate flattery, Madam, is irresistible--and unanswerable. The renewal--if, indeed, it was ever _really_ interrupted--of the _entente cordiale_ between us, is a blessed boon not to be matched in value by a hundred--Tunnels! _Madame France._ And this Convention is the sign and seal of that renewal, _n'est-ce-pas_? I _knew_ you never intended to stop in Egypt. _Mr. Bull._ Longer than was necessary--assuredly not, Madam. And I was _certain_ the New Hebrides had no real charms to permanently arrest your feet. _Madame France._ Though a _pied à terre_ in Raraitea, of course--you comprehend, Monsieur! _Mr. Bull._ Perfectly. The questions of Egypt and the New Hebrides, of our post near the Pyramids, and your Protectorate near Tahiti, have, of course, no real connection.