“Have you done?” said M. de Vermondans; “and can you not, as an accompaniment to so many exquisite things, bring us a bottle of claret?”

“Wrong again.” said Alete; “as if this beer, prepared from the best barley, the most perfumed hops, yellow as the Baltic, amber and pure as spring-water, was not more valuable than the coarse red fluid you send to such a distance for.”

“I agree with you,” said Ireneus, who in his turn wished to laugh at the young girl.  “It seems to me, that when seated in front of the riches of the north, it would be a profanation to pour out a libation in a foreign beverage.  This beer has besides so excellent a flavor, that were there anything like it in France, it is probable that the owners of the Clos de Vaugeot and Medoc would root out their vines to make room for hops and barley.”

“You are laughing at me, dear cousin,” said Alete; “take care, however.”

“Peste!” said M. de Vermondans, “any one who knows you would be rash indeed to excite your ceaseless babble.  I do not think that Ireneus, who has more than once proved his courage, is bold enough for that.”

“Two royal officers contending against a poor country-girl,” said Alete.  “We are not fairly matched, and I will go for the claret.”

It was wrong for Alete to leave just then, for the conversation, which hitherto had been gaily sustained, immediately began to languish, and assumed a direction which compelled her to silence.

Ireneus complained of the inroad of democratic ideas, of the trembling and fall of aristocratic institutions, of the authority of right divine, which in his chivalric enthusiasm he looked on as the basis of society.

“Ah,” replied Eric, with a tone of voice which seemed aroused by a feeling of affection, “this holy authority will lift itself up from the level of the popular waves which threaten to overwhelm it.  It will appear clear and brilliant as our polar star, above the clouds which now surround it.  It would subsist in all its power, if it were exercised by men who comprehended the holy duties it imposed on them.  Everything connected with this primitive law, with this noble image of patriarchal government, would yet exist, if each member of the great social family would contemplate from a just point of view his own condition, and carry out the consequences in a Christian-like manner.

“Charity, that is to say love and compassion, the two expressions in which are summed up all the joys and miseries of human life, are two virtues, ennobling and consoling man.  Let the rich man be charitable to the servant he has subjected to his will, toward the poor man who begs of him.  Let him say every day, as he awakes, every night as he prepares himself for repose, that the more powerful he has been made by Providence, the greater is the obligation he is under to aid and protect those around him.  In his turn, let the poor man be charitable to the rich; let him know that no rock of marble, no gilded platform can rescue the prince from mortal anxiety, and that human grief is found beneath the imperial purple as well as wrapped in rags, and that often the noble, surrounded by riches and at the festal board, is forced to envy the humble hut and obscure repose of the coal-burner.