“Madame?”

Madame de St. Cyr.

“The cellar?”

A salt-cellar.

How quick the flash that enlightened me while I surveyed the saliere!

“It is exquisite!  Am I never to sit at your table but some new device charms me?” I exclaimed.  “Is it your design, Mademoiselle?” I said, turning to Delphine.

Delphine, who had been ice to all the Baron’s advances, only curled her lip. “Des babioles!” she said.

“Yes, indeed,” cried Mme. de St. Cyr, extending her hand for it.  “But none the less her taste.  Is it not a fairy thing?  A Cellini! Observe this curve, these lines! but one man could have drawn them!”—­and she held it for our scrutiny.  It was a tiny hand and arm of ivory, parting the foam of a wave and holding a golden shell, in which the salt seemed to have crusted itself as if in some secretest ocean-hollow.  I looked at the Baron a moment; his eyes were fastened upon the saliere, and all the color had forsaken his cheeks,—­his face counted his years.  The diamond was in that little shell.  But how to obtain it?  I had no novice to deal with; nothing but delicate finesse would answer.

“Permit me to examine it,” I said.  She passed it to her left hand for me to take.  The butler made a step forward.

“Meanwhile, Madame,” said the Baron, smiling, “I have no salt.”

The instinct of hospitality prevailed;—­she was about to return it.  Might I do an awkward thing?  Unhesitatingly.  Reversing my glass, I gave my arm a wider sweep than necessary, and, as it met her hand with violence, the saliere fell.  Before it touched the floor I caught it There was still a pinch of salt left,—­nothing more.

“A thousand pardons!” I said, and restored it to the Baron.

His Excellency beheld it with dismay; it was rare to see him bend over and scrutinize it with starting eyes.

“Do you find there what Count Arnaklos begs in the song,” asked Delphine,—­“the secret of the sea, Monsieur?”

He handed it to the butler, observing, “I find here no”——­

“Salt, Monsieur?” replied the man, who did not doubt but all had gone right, and replenished it.

Had one told me in the morning that no intricate manoeuvres, but a simple blunder, would effect this, I might have met him in the Bois de Boulogne.

“We will not quarrel,” said my neighbor, lightly, with reference to the popular superstition.

“Rather propitiate the offended deities by a crumb tossed over the shoulder,” added I.

“Over the left?” asked the Baron, to intimate his knowledge of another idiom, together with a reproof for my gaucherie.

“A gauche,—­quelquefois c’est justement a droit,” I replied.

“Salt in any pottage,” said Madame, a little uneasily, “is like surprise in an individual; it brings out the flavor of every ingredient, so my cook tells me.”