“I challenge that vote!” cried the man with the tally.

“Mr. Pincornet’s vote is challenged!” shouted the sheriff.

“Order, order, gentlemen!  Your reason, Mr. Mocket?”

“The gentleman is a Frenchman and not a citizen of the United States!  He is not even a citizen of the French Republic!  He is an emigre.  He has no vote.  Mark off his name!”

“Sir!” cried the challenged voter, “I am a de Pincornet, cadet of a house well known in Gascony!  If I left France, I left it to find a great and free country, a country where one gentleman may serve another!”

A roar of laughter, led by Mocket, arose from the younger and lower sort of Republicans.  “But you do serve, Mr. Pincornet!  You teach all the ‘Well-born’ how to dance!”

“Didn’t you teach the Carys?  They dance beautifully.”

“Are brocaded coats still worn in Gascony?”

“Ne sutor supra crepidam judicaret! Caper all you please on a waxed floor, but leave Virginians to rule!”

Fairfax Cary, hot and angry, put in an oar.  “Mr. Sheriff, Mr. Sheriff!  Mr. Pincornet has lived these twelve years in Albemarle!  We have no more respected, no more esteemed citizen.  His vote’s as good as any man’s—­and rather better, I may remark, than that of some men!” He looked pointedly at Mocket.

Lewis Rand gave his henchman a second guiding glance.

“It is merely,” said Mocket promptly, “a question of that Alien Law of which the ‘Well-born’ are so proud.  Show your papers, Mr. Pincornet.  If you are a citizen of the United States, you have papers to show for it.”

“Yes, sir,” agreed the sheriff.  “That’s right, Mr. Mocket.  Let me see your papers, Mr. Pincornet.”

“Papers, papers!  I have no papers!” cried Mr. Pincornet.

“But every gentleman here—­and I have no care for the canaille—­knows that I live in Albemarle, in a small house between Greenwood and Fontenoy!  I have lived there since I left France in the abhorred year of ’92, with tears of rage in my eyes!  I came to this land, where, seeing that I must eat, and that my dancing was always admired, I said to myself, ’T’enez, Achille, my friend, we will teach these Virginians to dance!’ Mr. Fairfax Cary has been my pupil, and it gives me pleasure to vote for his brother to go make the laws for my adopted country—­”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Pincornet,” interrupted the sheriff, “but you have no vote.  I’ll have to ask you to stand aside.”

“Come up here, Mr. Pincornet,” said Cary, from the Justice’s Bench.  “I want to ask you about a gentleman of your name whom I had the honour to meet in London—­M. le Vicomte de Pincornet, a very gallant man—­”

“That,” said the dancing master, “would be my cousin Alexandre.  He escaped during the Terror hidden under a load of hay, his son driving in a blouse and red nightcap.  Will Mr. Cary honour me?” and out came a tortoise-shell snuff-box.