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 Rh. He even paused at this point and lighted a cigarette, while we all listened breathlessly. We felt that we had got the thing to a focus at last.

“Only one outcome—a Staatenbund.”

“Great heavens,” I said, “not a Staatenbund!”

“Undoubtedly,” said the Authority, puffing quietly at his cigarette, as if personally he wouldn’t lift a finger to stop the Staatenbund if he could, “that’s the end of it, a Staatenbund. In other words, we are back where we were before the Vienna Congress!”

At this he chuckled heartily to himself: so the rest of us laughed too: the thing was too absurd. But the Authority, who was a man of nice distinctions and genuinely anxious to instruct us, was evidently afraid that he had overstated things a little.

“Mind you,” he said, “there’ll be something left—certainly the Zollverein and either the Ausgleich or something very like it.”

All of the men gave a sort of sigh of relief. It was certainly something to have at least a sort of resemblance or appearance of the Ausgleich among us. We felt that we were getting on. One could see that a number of the men were on the brink of asking questions.

“What about Rumania,” asked Nelles—he