It does not consider either the colour or the quality of the cloth, but always keeps the needle going.
The thread it uses is often white, and it not infrequently breaks--when away goes the new patch! Then another has to be found.
A province is detached--two more are laid hold of.

The piece gets rent down the middle--a rag is caught up, then another, and whatever comes to hand is sewn together in breathless haste.

The effect of this stitching monomania has been, to keep constantly changing the map of Europe, to bring together, as chance willed it, races and religions of every pattern, and to trouble the existence of twenty peoples, without making the unity of a nation.

Certain Machiavellic old gentlemen sitting round a green cloth at Vienna, direct this work, measure the material, rub their hands complacently when it stretches, snatch off their wigs in despair when a piece is torn, and look on all sides for another wherewith to replace it.

In the Middle Ages, the sons of the house used to be sent to visit foreign princesses: they made love to their royal and serene highnesses in German, and always brought back with them some shred of territory.