Then the Ambassador, in sonorous voice, spoke some gracious
words regarding the friendship existing between the United States and
Italy, expressed a wish that their rivalry should ever take the form
of benefits conferred upon the human race, and instanced the honoured
recipient as the most notable example the world had yet produced of a
man bestowing blessings upon all nations in the arts of peace. The
eloquent Ambassador concluded by saying that, at the command of his
Royal master, it was both his duty and his pleasure to present, and so
forth and so forth.
Mr. Edison, visibly ill at ease, nevertheless made a suitable reply in
the fewest possible words, and the _etalage_ being thus at an end, the
noblemen, headed by their Ambassador, slowly retired, myself forming
the tail of the procession. Inwardly I deeply sympathised with the
French workman who thus unexpectedly found himself confronted by so
much magnificence. He cast one wild look about him, but saw that his
retreat was cut off unless he displaced some of these gorgeous
grandees. He tried then to shrink into himself, and finally stood
helpless like one paralysed. In spite of Republican institutions,
there is deep down in every Frenchman's heart a respect and awe for
official pageants, sumptuously staged and costumed as this one was.
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