Page:The Steel Flea.djvu/27

THE STEEL FLEA

The Englishmen kept showing the Emperor the different prime products they had, but Platoff stared and stared, and suddenly said: "Show us your manufactures of molva sugar."^[1]

But the Englishmen did not even know what molva was. They whispered together, and winked at one another, and kept repeating "Molva, molva," but they could not understand that such a sugar was made in our parts, and were obliged to confess that they had all sorts of sugar, but not molva.

Platoff says: "Well, then, you have nothing to brag about. Come to us, and we will treat you to tea with real molva from the Bobrinsky factories.^[2]

But the Emperor plucked him by the sleeve, and said softly: "Please don't ruin my politics."

1. Probably intended for khalva a very rich paste of honey and nuts.
2. Count Bobrinsky's extensive beet-sugar factories, in south-west Russia.

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