The Short Reign of Pippin IV Read Online Free Page B

American?”
    â€œFor one thing because the Americans have perhaps an exaggerated interest in princesses, and for another thing they have a strong feeling for the Cinderella story.”
    â€œCinderella?”
    â€œYou should read it, my dear,” he said.
    â€œGregory Peck is going to play the prince.”
    â€œOf course he is,” said M’sieur. “Now if it were a French novel the princess would find out that—Careful, my dear—please don’t come near the telescope. It is arranged for tonight’s show.”
    When their daughter had oozed away down the stairs and the gate to the courtyard had clanged behind her, Madame said, “I liked it almost better when she was writing novels. She was at home more often. In a way I will be glad when she finds a nice boy of a good family.”
    â€œShe must be a princess first,” said her husband. “Everyone must.”
    â€œYou should not make fun of her.”
    â€œPerhaps I was not. I can remember such dreams. They were very real.”
    â€œYou are amiable, M’sieur.”
    â€œI am curiously excited and content, Marie. For a whole week I shall be entertained”—he raised his fingers lightly—“by my friends up there.”
    â€œAnd you will be up all night and sleep all day.”
    â€œOf a certainty,” said M. Héristal.
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    The events of 19—in France should be studied not for their uniqueness but rather for their inevitability. The study of history, while it does not endow with prophecy, may indicate lines of probability.
    It was and is no new thing for a French government to fall for lack of a vote of confidence. What has been called in other countries “instability” is in France a kind of stability. Lord Cotten has said that “In France anarchy has been refined to the point of reaction,” and later, “Stability to a Frenchman is intolerable tyranny.” Alas, too few are emotionally capable of understanding Lord Cotten.
    Many millions of words partisan and passionate have been written about the recent French crisis and re-crisis. It remains to trace the process with the cool and appraising eye of the historian.
    On February 12, 19—, when M. Rumorgue was finally placed in the position of asking for a vote on the issue of Monaco, it is conceded that he knew the result in advance. Indeed, there were many around him who felt he welcomed the termination of his premiership. M. Rumorgue, in addition to his titular leadership of the Proto-Communist party, which is traditionally two degrees right of center, is an authority in psycho-botany. To accept the premiership at all, he had reluctantly abandoned for the time being the experiments concerning pain in plants which he had been carrying on for many years at his nursery at Juan les Pins. Few people outside this field are even aware of Professor Rumorgue’s Separate entitled Tendencies and Symptoms of Hysteria in Red Clover, reprinted from his address to the Academy of Horticulture. His academic triumph over his critics, some of whom went to the extreme of denouncing him as being crazier than his clover, must have made him doubly reluctant to assume not only the leadership of his party but also the premiership of France. The newspaper Peace Thru War, although in opposition to the Proto-Communists, very likely quoted M. Rumorgue correctly in remarking that white clover with all its faults was easier to deal with emotionally than the elected representatives of the people of France.
    The question on which M. Rumorgue’s government failed, while interesting, was not nationally important. It is widely believed that if the Monaco question had not arisen, some other difficulty would have taken its place. M. Rumorgue himself emerged with honor and was able to work quietly on his forthcoming book on “Inherited Schizophrenia in Legumes”—a group of Mendelian by-laws.
    At any rate, France found