The father smelt of the stable, and the son smells of the corps-de-garde."

"Curse him!" exclaimed the Marquis, who had arrived at the last pitch of exasperation; "I thought he would never have done with his battle of Moscow. The battle of Moscow! A pretty affair indeed! Who cares anything, or knows anything about it? Who speaks of it? I have never been in battle, but if I had, by the sword of my ancestors, Madame la baroness, it would have been quite a different affair. There would have been an end of it; I would never have returned, even covered with wounds. The battle of Moscow! And this fellow gives himself the airs of a Cæsar or an Alexander, the sneak! These are your heroes! These are the furious combats about which M. de Bonaparte has made so much noise, and which the enemies of the monarchy still vaunt so much! Nothing more than healthful exercises; the dead soon picked themselves up, and the slain are now better than ever. Vive Dieu! When we fight, things turn out quite different. When a gentleman falls, he does not pick himself up and run home. But if a mere clown, a villain, a Stamply falls in the service of France, Ventre-saint-gris! the chances are ten to one, that he will soon be at home telling of it the rabble. If he had a heart as among big as a mouse, he would blush to think himself alive; he would go and throw himself headlong into the river."

"But, Marquis, he prefers to live," said the baroness, with a smile.

"Let him live, then; but let him go and hide himself! Conceal your life,' says the sage. If he was as fond of glory as he pretends, he would prefer to have it thought that he died upon the field of honor, rather than return here, drawing after him his misery and disgrace. Why did he not stay in Siberia? That was a good place for him; it was suited to his tastes and habits. The baby whines about the climate: one would suppose he was born in an oven and had grown up in a hothouse! The Cossacks are noble people, mild and hospitable. He calls them barbarians. And are we to trouble ourselves about such worthless fellows? Are we to save their lives, receive them into our families, and make their lot a happy one at our expense? This is all the return you

get for it; they treat you like cannibals. I'll be bound, notwithstanding all his doleful stories, that he lived in the clover; you can place no dependence upon such rascals. And then comes his talk about liberty, native land, and paternal roof smoking in the horizon! great words which he, and his like, put forward to cover up their disorders and veil their misconduct."

"Liberty, native land, the paternal roof, the whole spiced with an inheritance of a million-it must be admitted," added Madame de Vaubert, "that a man may, for the sake of these, quit the flowery banks of the Don, and the tender hospitality of the Baskires, without being precisely a rascal."

"An inheritance of a million!" shouted the Marquis. "Where the devil is he going to get it?"

"Out of your pocket," replied the baroness, almost discouraged at being so often obliged to bring back the Marquis to the point at issue,

แ

Ah, ha!" cried the Marquis, "then he is a dangerous man, this Bernard? If he pushes me to extremities, Madame la baronne, you are little aware of how much I am capable; I will bring him before the tribunals."

"Then," said the baroness, " 'you will save him the necessity of bringing you there. Pray, Marquis, do not begin that. Consider matters as they are. Since you cannot escape them, look them in the face. What is there to be so frightened about? Bernard is in a cage; the lion is muzzled; the prey is in your grasp."

Yes, and what, in the name of heaven, shall I do with it ?"

"Time will determine. This morning our purpose was to instal the enemy in the place where we wished him, this has been done. Now we are to drive him from it;

this shall be done also."

"And, meanwhile," said the Marquis, impatiently, "we are to be crammed with Siberia, gun-shot, and Moscow ! We are to be daily regaled with a fricassee of ice, broken swords, and muskets? But, Madame la baronne, does it not appear to you that I am playing rather a shabby part in this matter? Ventre-saint-gris! I swear like Henry IV., but it seems to me I am employing very different means to reconquer my kingdom."

"Do you think, then," replied Madame de Vaubert, "that courage proceeds only from the muzzle of a gun, and that great deeds can only be accomplished at the point of the sword? If France has not been divided, parted by lot like the garments of our Saviour, in these latter times, to whom is it due? To M. de Talleyrand, who, in his plain attire, in pumps and silk stockings, with his right leg resting on his left, and his hand thrust into his vest pocket, has done more for France than all this rabble in leather breeches, which they call the old guard, but which, in fact, guards nothing at all. Do you not think, for example, that you have displayed, during the day which has just past, a hundred times more genius than Henry IV. at Ivry? To shake one's plume on the field, to cut and thrust with the sword, to heap the ground with the dead and dying, there is nothing very difficult about all this. What is truly glorious, is to triumph on the battle-field of life. Permit me to offer you my compliments. You have conducted yourself, to-day, with the coolness of a hero, the bold intrepidity of a demon, and the winning grace of an angel. Pardon me, Marquis, you have borne yourself most admirably."

Very true," said the Marquis, passing one leg over the other, and twirling his purse with his fingers, "it is very certain that this Stamply has seen nothing but fire."

"Ah! Marquis, how you softened him! Out of an iron gauntlet you made a kid glove. I knew you to be noble and valiant; but I was far from suspecting that your mind was gifted with such a marvellous suppleness. How fortunate thus to combine the strength of the oak with the pliancy of the willow! Marquis de La Seigliére," continued the baroness, with a grave look and an emphatic gesture, "the prince of Benevento occupied your place at the Congress of Vienna."

"Do you believe it ?" demanded M. de La Seigliére, stroking his chin.

"With a bend of your thumb you could have bent the bow of Nimrod," said the baroness, with a smile. "You could tame a tiger, and bring a panther to eat quietly and harmlessly from your hand."

"He is just like the rest of these people. At a distance they talk of nothing

but devouring you; but if we deign to smile on them, they crawl at our feet. But Madame la Baronne, I am not of an age to play the part of Diego; and if this fellow were a gentleman, I should still bear in mind the teachings of Saint George." Marquis," proudly replied Madame de Vaubert, "if this fellow were a gentleman, and you were Diego, you would not have far to go to find Roderigo."

At this moment the door of the apartment opened, and Raoul entered, gloved, spruce, and trim, with a sparkling eye and a fresh and rosy countenance, as irreproachable from head to foot as if he had just been taken from a band-box. He came to accompany his mother home; and, doubtless, not with anticipating the pleasure of paying his devoirs to M'lle. de La Seigliére, whom he had not seen since the evening before. As the young man entered, both the Marquis and Madame de Vaubert turned toward him with a complacent look, apparently charmed and refreshed at his appearance; it was, for them, like the entrance of a pure blood Limousin into the circus, which has been disgraced by a Norman mule. It was late; the day was near its close; the two hands of the clock were near uniting upon twelve. Having tendered her hand to the Marquis, Madame de Vaubert retired, supported by the arm of her son, whom, however, she abstained from informing of the memorable events of that day.

An hour after, all was quiet on both banks of the Clain. The Marquis, unable to shake off the influence of the violent emotions which he had experienced during the day, dreamed that troops of hussars, all slain upon the field of Moscow, were silently dividing his domains among themselves; that he saw them flying at full speed, each with his portion on the croup of his horse,-this with a field, that with a meadow, and another with a farm; and that Bernard galloped in the van, with the park in his valise and the chateau in one of his holsters. Having no longer a morsel of land to stand upon, the lost Marquis rolls off into space, like a comet, and goes sprawling down, vainly clutching at the stars for support. Madame de Vaubert dreamed also; and her dream strongly resembled a well known apologue. She saw a young and beautiful creature, sitting

upon the soft green sward, with an enormous lion amorously lying near her, with his paw in her lap, while a troop of valets, armed with forks and clubs, and concealed behind a cluster of trees, were watching their movements. The young girl sustained with one hand the paw of her tawney wooer, and with the other, with a pair of scissors was trimming the claws which docilely protruded themselves from their velvet couch. When each paw had undergone the like operation, the beautiful child drew from her pocket an ivory handled file, and, putting her arm around the head of the beast, she raised, with one hand, the thick and heavy lips, and, with the other, gently filed a double range of formidable teeth. If occasionally the patient suffered a surly growl to escape him, she would soon quiet him by her soft caresses. This second operation finished, when the lion had

neither claws nor fangs, the girl arose, and the valets rushing from their ambuscade, fell upon the poor beast, which sneaked off without offering any resistance, with lopped ears and dragging tail. And Bernard dreamed, too,-that in the midst of a field buried in snow, and beneath a frozen sky, he saw suddenly arise a beautiful lily, which perfumed the air; but, as he approached to pluck it, the royal flower was changed into a fairy, with ebony eyes and golden hair, which winged its way through the cloud, and alighted upon those charming shores where reign eternal spring. And finally, Raoul dreamed that it was the evening of his nuptials, and that at the very moment of opening the ball with the young Baroness de Vaubert, he discovered to his stuperfaction, that his cravat was on the wrong side before.