Part One Chapter 6 The Great Conspiracy

"You say right, gentlemen, both of you," he began, leaning forward. "I would not blame you if you never went to the White House again."

"Should I ever do so again," blazed the Spanish minister, "I will take my own wife in to dinner on my own arm, and place her at the head of the table, where she belongs! It was an insult to my sovereign that we received today."

"As much myself, sir!" said Mr. Merry, his brows contracted, his face flushed still with anger. "I shall know how to answer the next invitation which comes from Mr Jefferson.[1] I shall ask him whether or not there is to be any repetition of this sort of thing."

[Footnote 1: During the following winter Mr. Merry had opportunity to fulfill his threat. In February, 1804, the President again invited him to dine, in the following words: "Thomas Jefferson asks the favor of Mr. Merry to dine with a small party of friends on Monday, the 13th, at half past three."

Mr. Merry, still smarting all these months, stood on his dignity and addressed his reply to the Secretary of State.

Reviewing at some length what seemed to him important events, he added: "If Mr. Merry should be mistaken as to the meaning of Mr. Jefferson's note, and it should prove that the invitation is designed for him in a public capacity, he trusts that Mr. Jefferson will feel equally that it must be out of his power to accept it, without receiving previously, through the channel of the Secretary of State, the necessary formal assurance of the President's determination to observe toward him those niceties of distinction which have heretofore been shown by the executive government of the United States to the persons who have been accredited as our Majesty's ministers.