“In this nation we have only two true prophets, Calhoun and Clay—­both men of equal might, and resolution, and intellect—­gifted as beseems their vocation, masterful and heroic; and to these all other men are subordinate in the great designs of Providence.”

“Where do you leave Mr. Webster, John Quincy Adams, General Jackson himself, in such a category, madame?” I asked, eagerly.

“They are doing, or have done, the work God has appointed for them to do, I suppose, mademoiselle; but they are accessories merely of the times, and will pass away with the necessities of the moment.”

“‘The earth has bubbles as the water hath, and these are of them,’” said Major Favraud aside, between his short, set teeth, nodding to me as he spoke, and lending the next moment implicit attention to what Madame Grambeau was saying; for the brief pause she had made for another pinch of snuff was ended, and she continued impetuously, as if no interval had occurred: 

“Clay is, unconsciously, I trust, for the honor of mankind, fulfilling his destiny—­this great prophet who still refuses to prophesy.  He is entering the wedge for what he declines to admit the possibility of—­yet there must be moments when that eye of power pierces the clouds of prejudice and party, wherewith it seeks to blind its kingly vision, and descries the horrors beyond as the result of the acts he is now committing; and when such moments of clear conviction come to him, the ambitions tool of a party, I envy not his sensations,” and she shook her head mournfully.  “Not Napoleon at St. Helena, not Prometheus on his rock, were more to be pitied than he! the man whose ambition shall never know fruition, whose measures shall pass and leave no trace in less than fifty years after he has ceased to exist—­the splendid failure of our century!”

She ceased for a moment, with her eye fixed on space, her hands clasped, her whole face and manner uplifted, as if, indeed, on her likewise the prophet’s mantle had dropped from a chariot of fire.

“As to Calhoun—­he is God-fearing,” she continued, fervently.  “In the solitudes of a spiritual Mount Sinai, he has received the tablets of the Lord, and bends every energy to their fulfillment.  He, too, foresees—­not with an eye like Clay’s, clear only at intervals—­and clouded by vanity, ambition, and sophistry, at other seasons—­he, too, foresees the coming of our doom!  His clear vision embraces anarchy, dissension, civil war, with all its attendant horrors, as the consequence of man’s injustice; and, like Moses, he beholds the promised land into which he can never enter!  Would that it were given to him to appoint his Joshua, or even to see him face to face, recognizingly!  But this is not God’s will.  He lurks among the shadows yet—­this Joshua of the South, but God shall yet search him out and bring him visibly before the people!  Not while I live,” she added, solemnly, “but within the natural lives of all others who sit this day around my table!”