No venerable doctor, but in tripped a young French lass, bloom on her cheek, pink ribbons in her cap, liveliness in all her air, grace in the very tips of her elbows.  The most bewitching little chambermaid in Paris.  All art, but the picture of artlessness.

“Monsieur! pardon!”

“Oh, I pardon ye freely,” said Israel.  “Come to call on the Ambassador?”

“Monsieur, is de—­de—­” but, breaking down at the very threshold in her English, she poured out a long ribbon of sparkling French, the purpose of which was to convey a profusion of fine compliments to the stranger, with many tender inquiries as to whether he was comfortably roomed, and whether there might not be something, however trifling, wanting to his complete accommodation.  But Israel understood nothing, at the time, but the exceeding grace, and trim, bewitching figure of the girl.

She stood eyeing him for a few moments more, with a look of pretty theatrical despair, and, after vaguely lingering a while, with another shower of incomprehensible compliments and apologies, tripped like a fairy from the chamber.  Directly she was gone Israel pondered upon a singular glance of the girl.  It seemed to him that he had, by his reception, in some way, unaccountably disappointed his beautiful visitor.  It struck him very strangely that she had entered all sweetness and friendliness, but had retired as if slighted, with a sort of disdainful and sarcastic levity, all the more stinging from its apparent politeness.

Not long had she disappeared, when a noise in the passage apprised him that, in her hurried retreat, the girl must have stumbled against something.  The next moment he heard a chair scraping in the adjacent apartment, and there was another knock at the door.

It was the man of wisdom this time.

“My honest friend, did you not have a visitor, just now?”

“Yes, Doctor, a very pretty girl called upon me.”

“Well, I just stopped in to tell you of another strange custom of Paris.  That girl is the chambermaid, but she does not confine herself altogether to one vocation.  You must beware of the chambermaids of Paris, my honest friend.  Shall I tell the girl, from you, that, unwilling to give her the fatigue of going up and down so many flights of stairs, you will for the future waive her visits of ceremony?”

“Why, Doctor Franklin, she is a very sweet little girl.”

“I know it, my honest friend; the sweeter the more dangerous.  Arsenic is sweeter than sugar.  I know you are a very sensible young man, not to be taken in by an artful Ammonite, and so I think I had better convey your message to the girl forthwith.”

So saying, the sage withdrew, leaving Israel once more gloomily seated before the rifled mantel, whose mirror was not again to reflect the form of the charming chambermaid.

“Every time he comes in he robs me,” soliloquised Israel, dolefully; “with an air all the time, too, as if he were making me presents.  If he thinks me such a very sensible young man, why not let me take care of myself?”