r room?"

"Go it, then, my dearie; and I'll toddle up with the fol-de-rols and
what-you-may-calls," said the incorrigible Dick. "There, wife, Mrs.
John Seymour shall go first, so that you shan't be jealous of her
and me. You know we came pretty near being in interesting relations
ourselves at one time; didn't we, now?" he said with another wink.

It is said that a thorough-paced naturalist can reconstruct a whole
animal from one specimen bone. In like manner, we imagine that, from
these few words of dialogue, our expert readers can reconstruct Mr.
and Mrs. Follingsbee: he, vulgar, shallow, sharp, keen at a bargain,
and utterly without scruples; with a sort of hilarious, animal good
nature that was in a state of constant ebullition. He was, as Richard
Baxter said of a better man, "always in that state of hilarity that
another would be in when he hath taken a cup too much."

Dick Follingsbee began life as a peddler. He was now reputed to be
master of untold wealth, kept a yacht and race-horses, ran his own
theatre, and patronized the whole world and creation in general with a
jocular freedom. Mrs. Follingsbee had been a country girl, with small
early advantages, but considerable ambition. She had married Dick
Follingsbee, and helped him up in the world, as a clever, ambitious
woman may. The last few years she had been spending in Paris,
improving her mind and manners in reading Dumas' and Madame George
Sand's novels, and availing herself of such outskirt advantages of the
court of the Tuileries as industrious, pains-taking Americans, not
embarrassed by self-respect, may command.

Mrs. Follingsbee, like many another of our republicans who besieged
the purlieus of the late empire, felt that a residence near the court,
at a time when every thing good and decent in France was hiding in
obscure corners, and every thing _parvenu_ was wide awake and active,
entitled her to speak as one having authority concerning French
character, French manners and customs. This lady assumed the
sentimental literary _role_. She was always cultivating herself in her
own way; that is to say, she was assiduous in what she called keeping
up her French.

In the opinion of many of her class of thinkers, French is the key of
the kingdom of heaven; and, of course, it is worth one's while to sell
all that one has to be possessed of it. Mrs. Follingsbee had not been
in the least backward to do this; but, as to getting the golden
key, she had not su