Читать книгу When I Was Czar онлайн

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He put the amazing proposal bluntly and argued the case with as much coolness as if it had been little more than a simple conventional matter of almost everyday routine.

“You would naturally like to think it over,” he said, after I had paced the room a while in thought.

“You have told me everything?”

“Yes, I think so, except, perhaps, that, of course, I don’t for a moment believe Boreski made the proposition seriously.”

“Yet it’s an odd sort of joke, isn’t it?”

“I don’t mean that. I mean that no man in his senses would believe the Emperor would consent to his conditions for the interview—that my master should go to it absolutely unattended, that the place should be determined by Boreski and known to him alone, and that my master should meet a lady at the railway station, get into a strange carriage with her and be taken wherever they pleased to take him. Even in democratic countries monarchs don’t act like that.”

“Then what do you mean?” I asked, puzzled.

“That he intended to have his terms rejected in order that he might use the rejection to raise them. When I agreed—I only did so with you in my thoughts—I saw that his surprise amounted almost to embarrassment.”