All I require is that they shall be quiet,
peaceable people like your own deputies, and not disturb our proceedings.
If you want the Gegenseitigengeldbeitragendenverhaltnismassigkeiten
rearranged and readjusted I am ready for that. I will let you off at
twenty-eight per cent.--twenty-seven--even twenty-five if you insist,
for there is nothing illiberal about me when I am out on a diplomatic
debauch.
Now, in return for these concessions, I am willing to take anything in
reason, and I think we may consider the business settled and the
ausgleich ausgegloschen at last for ten solid years, and we will sign the
papers in blank, and do it here and now.
Well, I am unspeakably glad to have that ausgleich off my hands. It has
kept me awake nights for anderthalbjahr.
But I never could settle it before, because always when I called at the
Foreign Office in Vienna to talk about it, there wasn't anybody at home,
and that is not a place where you can go in and see for yourself whether
it is a mistake or not, because the person who takes care of the front
door there is of a size that discourages liberty of action and the free
spirit of investigation.
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