Madame de St. Andre was speechless in sheer amazement and indignation.  Though she had been annoyed, even frightened by the nobleman’s ardent manner and words, she was now eager to defend him from Calvert’s attack.  She knew him to be in the right, and the rising admiration for his quiet dignity and courage, which she could not repress, only added to her petulance and desire to be revenged on him.  It is so with all women—­they hate to be put in the wrong, even when the doing so means protection to themselves.  And so it was wellnigh intolerable to the spoiled beauty, who had never been used to the lightest contradiction, that this calm young American should so openly show his disapproval of her.

“I will pass by your reproof of myself, Monsieur,” she said at length, haughtily; her eyes flashing and a deep blush mantling her brow, “but I cannot consent to listen in silence to your condemnation of a personage whose talents and rank should protect him from your sarcasms.”

“Rank, Madame!” burst out Mr. Calvert at these words.  “I never knew before that morality or immorality, loyalty or treason, honor or dishonor had aught to do with rank!  In our country ’tis not so.  A king’s word can make of the meanest scoundrel a duke, a marquis, but an honest man holds his rank by a power greater than any king’s.”  He bent upon her such a compelling gaze that she was forced to turn and look at him.  Before Calvert’s flashing eyes and manly, honest indignation her own anger died out and an unwilling admiration took its place.  She blushed again deeply and bit her lips.  This young American, with his noble face, his simplicity of manner and democratic scorn of her rank and pretensions, had not only accused, but silenced her.  At any rate he should not see that he had impressed her!  She laughed lightly.

“What a noble sentiment, Monsieur!  Did you find it in one of Monsieur Rousseau’s books?”

“No, Madame, it was not in the works of the famous Monsieur Rousseau that I found the expression of that sentiment,” replied Calvert, hesitating slightly. “’Tis the theme of a little song by a young man named Robert Burns, who writes the sweetest poetry in the world, I think.  He is a friend and protege of Dr. Witherspoon, of the College of Princeton, who never tires of reading his verses to us.  I wish I could give you some idea of the beauty and power of the poem,” and he began to translate “For a’ that, and a’ that” into the best French at his command, smiling every now and then at the strange substitutes for Burns’s Scotch which he was forced to employ and at the curious metamorphosis of the poem into French prose.  But he managed to infuse the spirit and sentiment of the original into his offhand translation, and Madame de St. Andre listened attentively.