“You believe in me—­you believe in me!”

“Do I observe any etiquette with you, Lazarre?  This is the second time I have brought the fact to your notice.  I particularly wish you to note that I do not observe any etiquette with you.”

“What does a boy who has been brought up among Indians know about etiquette!  But you accept me, or you could not put the property you have loyally and at such risk saved for my family, into my hands.”

“I don’t accept even your uncle of Provence.  The king of Spain and I prefer to call him by that modest title.  Since you died or were removed from the Temple, he has taken the name of Louis XVIII, and maintained a court at the expense of the czar of Russia and the king of Spain.  He is a fine Latinist; quotes Latin verse; and keeps the mass bells everlastingly ringing; the Russians laugh at his royal masses!  But in my opinion the sacred gentleman is either moral slush or a very deep quicksand.  It astonishes me,” said the Marquis du Plessy, “to find how many people I do disapprove of!  I really require very little of the people I am obliged to meet.”

He smoothed my hands which were yet holding his, and exploded: 

“The Count of Provence is an old turtle!  Not exactly a reptile, for there is food in him.  But of a devilish flat head and cruel snap of the jaws!”

“How can that be,” I argued, “when his niece loves him so?  And even I, in the American woods, with mind eclipsed, was not forgotten.  He sent me of the money that he was obliged to receive in charity!”

“It is easy to dole out charity money; you are squeezing other people’s purses, not your own.  What I most object to in the Count of Provence, is that assumption of kingly airs, providing the story is true which leaked secretly among the emigres.  The story which I heard was that the dauphin had not died, but was an idiot in America.  An idiot cannot reign.  But the throne of France is not clamoring so loud for a Bourbon at present that the idiot’s substitute must be proclaimed and hold a beggar’s court.  There are mad loyalists who swear by this eighteenth Louis.  I am not one of them.  In fact, Lazarre, I was rather out of tune with your house!”

“Not you!” I said.

“I do not fit in these times.  I ought to have gone with my king and my friends under the knife.  Often I am ashamed of myself for slipping away.  That I should live to see disgusting fools in the streets of Paris, after the Terror was over!—­young men affecting the Greek and Roman manner—­greeting one another by wagging of the head!  They wore gray coats with black collars, gray or green cravats, carried cudgels, and decreed that all men should have the hair plaited, powdered, and fastened up with a comb, like themselves!  The wearer of a queue was likely to be knocked on the head.  These creatures used to congregate at the old Feydeau theater, or meet around the entrance of the Louvre, to talk classical jargon, and wag!”