which gave
the f.m.c. only a public recognition of kinship which had always been
his due. Bitter cup of humiliation!

Such was the stress within. Then there was the storm without. The
Grandissimes were in a high state of excitement. The news had reached
them all that Honore had met the question of titles by selling one of
their largest estates. It was received with wincing frowns, indrawn
breath, and lifted feet, but without protest, and presently with a smile
of returning confidence.

"Honore knew; Honore was informed; they had all authorized Honore; and
Honore, though he might have his odd ways and notions, picked up during
that unfortunate stay abroad, might safely be trusted to stand by the
interests of his people."

After the first shock some of them even raised a laugh:

"Ha, ha, ha! Honore would show those Yankees!"

They went to his counting-room and elsewhere, in search of him, to smite
their hands into the hands of their far-seeing young champion. But, as
we have seen, they did not find him; none dreamed of looking for him in
an enemy's camp (19 Bienville) or on the lonely suburban commons,
talking to himself in the ghostly twilight; and the next morning, while
Aurora and Clotilde were seated before him in his private office,
looking first at the face and then at the back of two mighty drafts of
equal amount on Philadelphia, the cry of treason flew forth to these
astounded Grandissimes, followed by the word that the sacred fire was
gone out in the Grandissime temple (counting-room), that Delilahs in
duplicate were carrying off the holy treasures, and that the
uncircumcised and unclean--even an f.m.c.--was about to be inducted into
the Grandissime priesthood.

Aurora and Clotilde were still there, when the various members of the
family began to arrive and display their outlines in impatient
shadow-play upon the glass door of the private office; now one, and now
another, dallied with the doorknob and by and by obtruded their lifted
hats and urgent, anxious faces half into the apartment; but Honore would
only glance toward them, and with a smile equally courteous,
authoritative and fleeting, say:

"Good-morning, Camille" (or Charlie--or Agamemnon, as the case might
be); "I will see you later; let me trouble you to close the door."

To add yet another strain, the two ladies, like frightened, rescued
children, would cling to their deliverer. They wished him to become the
custodian and investor of their w