“A lady-killer.”

“But he is next in dignity to the President.”

Doctor Chantry sniffed.

“What is even the President of a federation like this, certain to fall to pieces some fine day!”

I felt offended; for my instinct was to weld people together and hold them so welded.

“If I were a president or a king,” I told him, “and men conspired to break the state, instead of parleying I would hang them up like dogs.”

“Would you?”

Despising the country in which he found himself, my master took no trouble to learn its politics.  But since history had rubbed against us in the person of Jerome Bonaparte, I wanted to know what the world was doing.

“Colonel Burr had a pleasant gentleman with him at the manor,” Doctor Chantry added.  “His name was Harmon Blennerhassett; a man of good English stock, though having a wild Irish strain, which is deplorable.”

The best days of that swift winter were Sundays, when my master left off snapping, and stood up reverently in our dining-room to read his church service.  Madame de Ferrier and Paul and Ernestine came from their apartment to join in the Protestant ritual; and I sat beside them so constantly that the Catholic priest who arrived at Easter to dress up the souls of the household, found me in a state of heresy.

I have always thought a woman needs a dark capping of hair, whatever her complexion, to emphasize her beauty.  For light locks seem to fray out to nothing, and waste to air instead of fitly binding a lovely countenance.  Madame de Ferrier’s hair was of exactly the right color.  Her eyebrows were distinct dark lines, and the lashes were so dense that you noticed the curling rim they made around her gray eyes.  Whether the gift of looking to your core is beauty or not, I can only say she had it.  And I could not be sworn what her features were; such life and expression played over and changed them every moment.

As to her figure, it was just in its roundness and suppleness, and had a lightness of carriage that I have never seen equaled.  There was charm in looking at without approaching her that might have satisfied me indefinitely, if De Chaumont had not come home.

Ernestine herself made the first breach in that sacred reserve.  The old woman met me in the hall, courtesied, and passed as usual.  I turned behind the broad ribbons which hung down her back from cap to heels, and said: 

“Oh, by the way, Ernestine, how is Madame de Ferrier?  I was going to knock—­”

And Ernestine courtesied again, and opened the door, standing aside for me to enter.

Madame de Ferrier sat on a bearskin before the hearth with Paul, who climbed over her and gave her juicy kisses.  There was a deep wood fire, upheld by very tall andirons having cups in their tops, which afterwards I learned were called posset cups.  She was laughing so that her white teeth showed, and she made me welcome like a playmate; remaining on the rug, and bidding Ernestine set a chair for me near the fire.