ung African boy, full of
intelligence and mischief; simple and independent in his nature, yet
wild as his country. Zamor fancied himself the equal of all he met,
scarcely deigning to acknowledge the king himself as his superior. This
son of Africa was presented to me by the duc de Richelieu, clad in
the picturesque costume of his native land; his head ornamented with
feathers of every colour, a short petticoat of plaited grass around his
waist, while the richest bracelets adorned his wrists, and chains of
gold, pearls, and rubies, glittered over his neck and hung from his
ears. Never would any one have suspected the old marechal, whose
parsimony was almost proverbial, of making such a magnificent present.

In honour of the tragedy of Alzire, I christened my little negro Zamor,
to whom by degrees I became attached with all the tenderness of a
mother. You ask me why? Indeed that is more than I can tell; perhaps
at first I looked upon him as a sort of puppet or plaything, but,
imperceptibly to myself, I became passionately fond of my little page,
nor was the young urchin slow in perceiving the ascendancy he had gained
over me, and, in the end, to abuse his influence, and attained, as
I have before said, an almost incredible degree of insolence and
effrontery. Still I pardoned all his folly, and amused myself from
morning to night with watching his nimble fingers perform a thousand
tricks of jugglery. Even now that I have lost the gaiety of my happy
days, when I recall his irresistibly comic ways, I catch myself
laughing, like an old simpleton, at the bare recollection of his monkey
feats. I could relate twenty of his mischievous pranks, each more
amusing than the other. I will, however, excuse you from hearing
nineteen of them, upon condition that you shall listen to the twentieth,
which I select as being the shortest.

One day, upon which I had invited some select friends to dinner, a
superb pie was brought to table as a present which the ungallant M. de
Maupeou had had the politeness to send me in the morning. One of the
company proceeded to cut it, when scarcely had he pierced the
crust, than its perfidious contents proved to be an immense swarm of
cockchafers, which spread humming and buzzing all over the chamber.
Zamor, who had never before seen these insects, began to pursue them
all over the room, buzzing and humming as loudly as they did. The chase
lasted a long time; but at last the poor cockchafers weary of carr