...
Deliberately, I framed the answer:
"_Non. J'aime beaucoup les francais._"
Agile as a weasel, Monsieur le Ministre was on top of me: "It is
impossible to love Frenchmen and not to hate Germans."
I did not mind his triumph in the least. The discomfiture of the rosette
merely amused me. The surprise of the moustache I found very pleasant.
Poor rosette! He kept murmuring desperately: "Fond of his friend, quite
right. Mistaken of course, too bad, meant well."
With a supremely disagreeable expression on his immaculate face the
victorious minister of security pressed his victim with regained
assurance: "But you are doubtless aware of the atrocities committed by
the boches?"
"I have read about them," I replied very cheerfully.
"You do not believe?"
"_Ca ce peut._"
"And if they are so, which of course they are" (tone of profound
conviction) "you do not detest the Germans?"
"Oh, in that case, of course anyone must detest them," I averred with
perfect politeness.
And my case was lost, forever lost. I breathed freely once more. All my
nervousness was gone. The attempt of the three gentlemen sitting before
me to endow my friend and myself with different fates had irrevocably
failed.
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