at his side, from whom the other females shrank
with frequent demonstrations of contempt, was Pisgah's _blanchisseuse_.

He was in her debt, and paid her with compliments; she is old and
uninviting, and he owes her eight hundred francs. Hers are the new
garments which he wears to-night. Few knew how many weary hours she
labored for them in the floating houses upon the Seine. But she is in
love with Pisgah, and is quite oblivious of the general regard; for,
strange to such grand occasions, she has both eaten and imbibed
enormously, and it may be even doubted at present whether she sees
anything at all.

She strokes his cloth coat with her red, swollen hands, and proposes now
and then that he shall visit the wardrobe to look after his new hat; but
Pisgah only passes his arm about her, and drains his absinthe, and
sometimes, as if to reassure the company, shouts wildly at the wrong
places: "'At's so, boys!" "Hoorah for you!" "Ay! capital, gen'l'men,
capital!" And his partner, conscious that something has happened, laughs
to her waist, and leans forward, quite overcome, as if she beheld
something mirthful over her washboard.

The place was now quite dreamy with tobacco-smoke; Freckle was riotously
sick at the window, and Andy Plade, who had been borrowing small sums
from everybody who would lend, struck the table with a corkscrew, and
called for order.

"Drire rup!" cried Mr. Freckle, looking very attentively, but seeing
nothing.

"I have the honor to state, gentlemen of the Colony, that we have with
us to-night an eloquent representative of our country--one whose
business energy and enterprise have been useful both to his own fortunes
and to the South--one who is a friend of yours, and more than a dear
friend to me. We came from the same old Palmetto State, the first and
the last ditch of our revolution. I give you a toast, gentlemen, to
which Mr. Hugenot will respond:

"'The Mother Country and the Colony--good luck to both!'"

"Hoorah for you!" cried Pisgah, looking the wrong way.

The glasses rattled an instant, amid iterations of "Hear! hear!" and Mr.
Hugenot, rising, as it appeared from a bandbox, carefully surveyed
himself in a mirror opposite, and touched his nose with a small nosegay.

"I feel, my friends, rather as your host than your guest to-night--"

("It isn't yesternight"--from Freckle--"it's to-morroer night.")

"For I, gentlemen, stand upon my hereditary, if not my native heath; and
you are, at