“Folks comin’ home a’ready, yass.”

Her hearer looked down the road.

Suddenly a voice that, once heard, was always known,—­deep and pompous, as if a lion roared,—­sounded so close behind him as to startle him half from his seat.

“Is this a corporeal man, or must I doubt my eyes?  Hah!  Professor Frowenfeld!” it said.

“Mr. Fusilier!” exclaimed Frowenfeld in a subdued voice, while he blushed again and looked at the new-comer with that sort of awe which children experience in a menagerie.

“Citizen Fusilier,” said the lion.

Agricola indulged to excess the grim hypocrisy of brandishing the catchwords of new-fangled reforms; they served to spice a breath that was strong with the praise of the “superior liberties of Europe,”—­those old, cast-iron tyrannies to get rid of which America was settled.

Frowenfeld smiled amusedly and apologetically at the same moment.

“I am glad to meet you.  I—­”

He was going on to give Honore Grandissime’s message, but was interrupted.

“My young friend,” rumbled the old man in his deepest key, smiling emotionally and holding and solemning continuing to shake Joseph’s hand, “I am sure you are.  You ought to thank God that you have my acquaintance.”

Frowenfeld colored to the temples.

“I must acknowledge—­” he began.

“Ah!” growled the lion, “your beautiful modesty leads you to misconstrue me, sir.  You pay my judgment no compliment.  I know your worth, sir; I merely meant, sir, that in me—­poor, humble me—­you have secured a sympathizer in your tastes and plans.  Agricola Fusilier, sir, is not a cock on a dunghill, to find a jewel and then scratch it aside.”

The smile of diffidence, but not the flush, passed from the young man’s face, and he sat down forcibly.

“You jest,” he said.

The reply was a majestic growl.

“I never jest!” The speaker half sat down, then straightened up again.  “Ah, the Marquis of Caso Calvo!—­I must bow to him, though an honest man’s bow is more than he deserves.”

“More than he deserves?” was Frowenfeld’s query.

“More than he deserves!” was the response.

“What has he done?  I have never heard—­”

The denunciator turned upon Frowenfeld his most royal frown, and retorted with a question which still grows wild in Louisiana: 

“What”—­he seemed to shake his mane—­“what has he not done, sir?” and then he withdrew his frown slowly, as if to add, “You’ll be careful next time how you cast doubt upon a public official’s guilt.”

The marquis’s cavalcade came briskly jingling by.  Frowenfeld saw within the carriage two men, one in citizen’s dress, the other in a brilliant uniform.  The latter leaned forward, and, with a cordiality which struck the young spectator as delightful, bowed.  The immigrant glanced at Citizen Fusilier, expecting to see the greeting returned with great haughtiness; instead of which that person uncovered his leonine head, and, with a solemn sweep of his cocked hat, bowed half his length.  Nay, he more than bowed, he bowed down—­so that the action hurt Frowenfeld from head to foot.