I thought of the Grignon and Tank families, who were probably on the road to Albany.  Miss Chantry bespoke her brother’s attention.

“There he is.”

“Who?” the doctor inquired.

“His highness,” she incisively responded, “Prince Jerome Bonaparte.”

I remembered my father had said that Bonaparte was a great soldier in a far off country, and directly asked Miss Chantry if the great soldier was in the ball-room.

She breathed a snort and turned upon my master.  “Pray, are you teaching this lad to call that impostor the great soldier?”

Doctor Chantry denied the charge and cast a weak-eyed look of surprise at me.

I said my father told me Bonaparte was a great soldier, and begged to know if he had been deceived.

“Oh!” Miss Chantry responded in a tone which slighted Thomas Williams.  “Well!  I will tell you facts.  Napoleon Bonaparte is one of the worst and most dangerous men that ever lived.  He sets the world by the ears, and carries war into every country of Europe.  That is his youngest brother yonder—­that superfine gallant, in the long-tailed white silk coat down to his heels, and white small-clothes, with diamond buckles in his shoes, and grand lace stock and ruffles.  Jerome Bonaparte spent last winter in Baltimore; and they say he is traveling in the north now to forget a charming American that Napoleon will not let him marry.  He has got his name in the newspapers of the day, and so has the young lady.  The French consul warned her officially.  For Jerome Bonaparte may be made a little king, with other relations of your great soldier.”

The young man who might be made a little king was not as large as I was myself, and had a delicate and womanish cut of countenance.  I said he was not fit for a king, and Miss Chantry retorted that neither was Napoleon Bonaparte fit for an emperor.

“What is an emperor?” I inquired.

“A chief over kings,” Doctor Chantry put in.  “Bonaparte is a conqueror and can set kings over the countries he has conquered.”

I said that was the proper thing to do.  Miss Chantry glared at me.  She had weak hair like her brother, but her eyes were a piercing blue, and the angles of her jaws were sharply marked.

Meditating on things outside of my experience I desired to know what the white silk man had done.

“Nothing.”

“Then why should the emperor give him a kingdom?”

“Because he is the emperor’s brother.”

“But he ought to do something himself,” I insisted.  “It is not enough to accept a chief’s place.  He cannot hold it if he is not fit.”

“So the poor Bourbons found.  But they were not upstarts at any rate.  I hope I shall live to see them restored.”

Here was another opportunity to inform myself.  I asked Miss Chantry who the Bourbons were.

“They are the rightful kings of France.”

“Why do they let Bonaparte and his brothers take their place?”