At that English “daredevil” word I was in my mind again back in the old Chateau de Grez and into my own childhood.

“You young daredevil, you, hold tight to that vine until I get a grip on your wrist, or you’ll dash us both on the rocks below,” was the exact sentence with which my father bestowed my title upon me as he hung by his heels out of a window of the old vine-covered Chateau de Grez.

“It is one large mistake that my jeune fille is born what you call a boy in heart. Helas!” sobbed my beautiful young French mother as she regarded us from the garden below.

“If you were a boy I’d thrash you within an inch of your life, but as you are a girl I suppose it is permissible for me to admire your pluck, Mademoiselle Roberta,” said my father as he landed me in the music room by his side while an exchange of excited sentences went on between my mother and old Nannette in the garden below.  “What were you doing out on that ledge, anyway?  It is more than a hundred feet to the ground and the rocks.”

“I was making the hunt through Yellowstone Park that you have related to me, father, and I prefer that you give me a boy’s punishment.  If I have a boy’s what you call ‘pluck,’ I should have a boy’s what you call ‘thrashing.’  Monsieur, I make that demand.  I am the Marquise de Grez and Bye, and it may be that as you are an American you do not understand fully the honor of the house of Grez.”  I can remember that as I spoke I drew my ten-year old body up to its full height, which must have been over that of twelve years, and looked my father straight in the face with a glance of extreme hauteur as near as was possible to that of the portrait of the old Marquis de Grez, who died fighting on the field of Flanders.

“Eh, la la, what is it I have produced for you, Henri of America?  It is not a proper jeune fille, nor do I know what punishment to impose upon her; but with you I must laugh,” with which my beautiful mother from the doorway threw herself into the arms of her young American husband and her laughter of silver mingled with his deep laugh of a great joy.

“Don’t worry, Celeste; Bob is just a clear throw-back to her great-grandmother, Nancy Donaldson, who shot two Indians and a bear in defense of her kiddies one afternoon while my maternal grandsire was in the stockades presiding over the council in which was laid down the first broad draft for the formation of the Commonwealth of Harpeth.  I’m sorry, dear, that she is so vigorously American that she has to climb the Rocky Mountains even here in the garden spot of France.  Just now she is French enough to be dealing with me in the terms of that jolly old boy of Flanders fame in the hall downstairs; but cheer up, sweetheart, she’s a wild, daredevil American and I’m going to send her back to the plains as soon as she speaks her native tongue with less French accent.  Then the rest of us can be happily French forever after.”