A Prince of the Captivity by John Buchan

The little low-roofed café in the Rue des Célestins in which Falconet sat on a certain October afternoon was flooded with the hazy golden light which is the glory of Paris in a fine autumn. The patron was busy in a corner with his own avocations; a party of four stout citizens were drinking bocks and disputing vivaciously; but otherwise the place was empty, for it was the slack period when déjeuner is over and the hour of apéritifs has not arrived. Falconet was waiting for Adam, and as he smoked a delayed after- luncheon cigar he let his mind run over the events of the past week, since he had landed in England.

In the retrospect the chief was a talk with Christopher Stannix, for whom he had acquired a puzzled respect. Falconet loved politics and their practitioners no more than the rest of his countrymen, but Stannix was unlike any politician he had ever met. He seemed to stand aside, intervening now and then to put his weight into the scales to adjust the balance. He was a noted pricker of bladders, and had deflated some of Falconet's pet ones, but he was as much in earnest as Falconet himself. He called himself a "trimmer," and had justified the name from a period of English history with which Falconet was not familiar. But above all he was Adam's friend.