need descended to menial offices, and forgot that he could dance and ride and fence almost as well as his young master.  But a bullet from a barricade put an end to his duty there, and he hated utterly the democratic rule that had overturned for him both past and future, so he escaped, and came to America, the grand resort of refugees, where he had labored, as he best knew how, for his own support, and kept to himself his disgust at the manners and customs of the barbarians.  Now, for the first time, he was at home and happy.  Miss Lucinda’s delicate fashions suited him exactly; he adored her taste for the beautiful, which she was unconscious of; he enjoyed her cookery, and though he groaned within himself at the amount of debt he was incurring, yet he took courage from her kindness to believe she would not be a hard creditor, and, being naturally cheerful, put aside his anxieties and amused himself as well as her with his stories, his quavering songs, his recipes for pot-au-feu, tisane, and pates, at once economical and savory.  Never had a leg of lamb or a piece of roast beef gone so far in her domestic experience, a chicken seemed almost to outlive its usefulness in its various forms of reappearance, and the salads he devised were as wonderful as the omelets he superintended, or the gay dances he played on his beloved violin, as soon as he could sit up enough to manage it.  Moreover,—­I should say mostover, if the word were admissible,—­Monsieur Leclerc lifted a great weight before long from Miss Lucinda’s mind.  He began by subduing Fun to his proper place by a mild determination that completely won the dog’s heart.  “Women and spaniels,” the world knows, “like kicking”; and though kicks were no part of the good man’s Rareyfaction of Fun, he certainly used a certain amount of coercion, and the dog’s lawful owner admired the skill of the teacher and enjoyed the better manners of the pupil thoroughly; she could do twice as much sewing now, and never were her nights disturbed by a bark, for the dog crouched by his new friend’s bed in the parlor and lay quiet there.  Toby was next undertaken, and proved less amenable to discipline; he stood in some slight awe of the man who tried to teach him, but still continued to sally out at Miss Lucinda’s feet, to spring at her caressing hand when he felt ill-humored, and to claw Fun’s patient nose and his approaching paws when his misplaced sentimentality led him to caress the cat; but after a while a few well-timed slaps administered with vigor cured Toby of his worst tricks, though every blow made Miss Lucinda wince, and almost shook her good opinion of Monsieur Leclerc:  for in these long weeks he had wrought out a good opinion of himself in her mind, much to her own surprise; she could not have believed a man could be so polite, so gentle, so patient, and above all so capable of ruling without tyranny.  Miss Lucinda was puzzled.

One day, as Monsieur Leclerc was getting better, just able to go about on crutches, Israel came into the kitchen, and Miss Manners went out to see him.  She left the door open, and along with the odor of a pot of raspberry-jam scalding over the fire, sending its steams of leaf-and insect-fragrance through the little house, there came in also the following conversation.