" (It was quite
true, the men of my husband's age spoke very rarely any other language
but their own; now almost all the younger generation speak German or
English or both. Almost all my son's friends speak English perfectly.)
"Oh no, I can't," he said; "I haven't enough the habit of speaking
French. I don't say the things I want to say, only the things I can say,
which is very different." "But what did you do in Russia?" "All the
women speak English." "But for affairs, diplomatic negotiations?" "All
the women speak English." I have often heard it said that the Russian
women were much more clever than the men. He evidently had found
it true.
VI
THE EXPOSITION YEAR
The big political dinners were always interesting. On one occasion we
had a banquet on the 2d of December. My left-hand neighbour, a senator,
said to me casually: "This room looks very different from what it did
the last time I was in it." "Does it? I should have thought a big
official dinner at the Foreign Office would have been precisely the same
under any regime." "A dinner perhaps, but on that occasion we were not
precisely dining.
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