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— William Blake

Tyger, tyger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

…

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verb

To cause to move faster; to quicken the motion of; to add to the speed of.

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Chapter 91 of 365

Chapter Vii

3 min read

When Borís and Anna Pávlovna returned to the others Prince Hippolytehad the ear of the company.

Bending forward in his armchair he said: “Le Roi de Prusse!” and having said this laughed. Everyone turned toward him.

“Le Roi de Prusse?” Hippolyte said interrogatively, again laughing, and then calmly and seriously sat back in his chair. Anna Pávlovna waited for him to go on, but as he seemed quite decided to say no more she began to tell of how at Potsdam the impious Bonaparte had stolen the sword of Frederick the Great.

“It is the sword of Frederick the Great which I...” she began, butHippolyte interrupted her with the words: “Le Roi de Prusse...” andagain, as soon as all turned toward him, excused himself and said nomore.
Anna Pávlovna frowned. Mortemart, Hippolyte’s friend, addressed himfirmly.

“Come now, what about your Roi de Prusse?”

Hippolyte laughed as if ashamed of laughing.

“Oh, it’s nothing. I only wished to say...” (he wanted to repeat a joke he had heard in Vienna and which he had been trying all that evening to get in) “I only wished to say that we are wrong to fight pour le Roi de Prusse!”

Borís smiled circumspectly, so that it might be taken as ironicalor appreciative according to the way the joke was received. Everybodylaughed.
“Your joke is too bad, it’s witty but unjust,” said AnnaPávlovna, shaking her little shriveled finger at him.

Chapter Vii

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