The vanity which a minute since had expanded his hands now got into his legs, and set them upright under his body.  He stood upon them, his eyes proudly lowered upon the seal of the claret.  A pang of envy actually crossed my mind.  I, simple rentier, with my two little establishments pressing more closely upon my resources with every year’s increase of house-rates, how could I look at this glorious small freeholder without comparisons?

“So, then, Father Joliet,” said I, “you are rich?”

“At least I depend no longer on my horse, and that thanks to you and the government.”

“To me!  What do you mean?”

“Why, have you forgotten the two chickens?”

[Illustration:  The Lone crusade.]

At the allusion to the chickens we caught each other’s eye, and laughed like a pair of augurs.  But the mysterious fowls shall be explained to the reader.

[Illustration:  Tender Charity.]

[Illustration:  Necessity knowing law.]

I need not explain that I have cast my lot with the Colonial Americans of Paris, and taken their color.  It is a sweet and luxurious mode of life.  The cooks send round our dinners quite hot, or we have faultless servants, recommended from one colonist to another:  these capital creatures sometimes become so thoroughly translated into American that I have known them shift around from flat to flat in colonized households of the second and third stories without ever touching French soil for the best part of a lifetime.  At our receptions, dancing-teas and so on we pass our time in not giving offence.  Federals and Confederates, rich cotton-spinners from Rhode Island and farmers from thousand-acre granges in the West, are obliged to mingle and please each other.  Naturally, we can have no more political opinions than a looking-glass.  We entertain just such views as Galignani gives us every morning, harmonized with paste from a dozen newspapers.  Our grand national effort, I may say, the common principle that binds us together as a Colony, is to forget that we are Americans.  We accordingly give our whole intellects to the task of appearing like Europeans:  our women succeed in this particularly well.  Miss Yuba Sequoia Smith, whose father made a fortune in water-rights, is now afraid to walk a single block without the attendance of a chambermaid in a white cap, though she came up from California quite alone by the old Panama route.  Everybody agrees that our ladies dress well.  Shall I soon forget how proud Mrs. Aquila Jones was when a gentleman of the emperor’s body-guard took her for Marguerite Bellanger in the Bois?  Our men, not having the culture of costume to attend to, are perhaps a little in want of a stand-point.  Still, we can play billiards in the Grand Hotel and buy fans at the Palais Royal.  We go out to Saint-Cloud on horseback, we meet at the minister’s; and I contend that