Any time these eight hundred years
this ill-will has been going on, and has been transmitted on the French
side from father to son. On the French side, not on ours: we have had
no, or few, defeats to complain of, no invasions to make us angry;
but you see that to discuss such a period of time would demand a
considerable number of pages, and for the present we will avoid the
examination of the question.
But they hate us, that is the long and short of it; and you see how this
hatred has exploded just now, not upon a serious cause of difference,
but upon an argument: for what is the Pasha of Egypt to us or them but
a mere abstract opinion? For the same reason the Little-endians in
Lilliput abhorred the Big-endians; and I beg you to remark how his Royal
Highness Prince Ferdinand Mary, upon hearing that this argument was
in the course of debate between us, straightway flung his furniture
overboard and expressed a preference for sinking his ship rather than
yielding it to the etranger. Nothing came of this wish of his, to be
sure; but the intention is everything.
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