One
cannot always be satisfied laughing at their solecisms in breeding
and propriety. One grows weary at last of ridiculing their thousand
absurdities; and then there comes the terrible retribution in the
reflection of what the devil brought me into such company? a question
that, however easily answered, grows more and more intolerable the
oftener it is asked. To be sure, in my case there was little choice in
the matter, for I was not in any way the arbiter of my own fortune. I
saw myself converted from a royal page to a printer's devil by a kind
old fellow, who saved my life by smearing my face with ink, and covering
my scarlet uniform with a filthy blouse; and since that day I have taken
the hint, and often found the lesson a good one--the dirtier the safer!

'We were of the old nobility of France, but as the name of our family
was the cause of its extinction, I took care to change it. I see you
don't clearly comprehend me, and so I'll explain myself better. My
father lived unmolested during the earlier days of the Revolution,
and might so have continued to the end, if a detachment of the Garde
Republicaine had not been despatched to our neighbourhood of Saarlouis,
where it was supposed some lurking regard for royalty yet lingered.
These fellows neither knew nor cared for the ancient noblesse of the
country, and one evening a patrol of them stopped my father as he was
taking his evening walk along the ramparts. He would scarcely deign to
notice the insolent '_Qui va la?_ of the sentry, a summons he at least
thought superfluous in a town which had known his ancestry for eight or
nine generations. At the repetition of the cry, accompanied by something
that sounded ominous, in the sharp click of a gun-lock, he replied
haughtily, "Je suis le Marquis de Saint-Trone."

'"There are no more marquises in France!" was the savage answer.

'My father smiled contemptuously, and briefly said "Saint-Trone."

'"We have no saints either," cried another.

'"Be it so, my friend," said he, with mingled pity and disgust. "I
suppose some designation may at least be left to me, and that I may call
myself Trone."

'"We are done with thrones long ago," shouted they in chorus, "and we
'll finish you also."

'Ay, and they kept their word, too. They shot him that same evening, on
very little other charge than his own name! If I have retained the old
sound of my name, I have given it a more plebeian spelling, which is,
perhaps, just as mu