Cohen."
Somehow he had grown suddenly smaller since the little man had
been talking.
"Yes,--of course, we are all assistants; Mr. Grayson assists at
the bank, and I assist my man, Jacob, who makes such funny
mistakes in the cut of his trousers. Oh, yes, that is quite the
way life is made up. But about this tunnel? It is part of this new
branch, is it not? Some of my friends have told me about it. And
it is going straight through the mountain."
And then before Jack or Peter could reply the speaker branched out
into an account of the financing of the great Mt. Cenis tunnel,
and why the founder of the house of Rothschild, who had "assisted"
in its construction, got so many decorations from foreign
governments; the talk finally switching off to the enamelled and
jewelled snuff boxes of Baron James Rothschild, whose collection
had been the largest in Europe; and what had become of it; and
then by one of those illogical jumps--often indulged in by well-
informed men discussing any subject that absorbs them--brought up
at Voltaire and Taine and the earlier days of the Revolution in
which one of the little tailor's ancestors had suffered spoliation
and death.
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