f Chauvet and Lieutenant Thezard. He
regaled them with a supper _a l'italienne_, which lacked neither the
cranes of Peretola nor the little sucking-pig scented with aromatic
herbs, nor the best vintages of Tuscany, Naples and Sicily.
Uncompromising Republicans as Brutus himself, they drank to France and
Freedom. Their host acknowledged the toast; then turning to the General
whom he had seated on his right hand;

"Nephew!" said he, "are you not curious to examine the genealogical tree
painted on the wall yonder? You will be gratified to see from it that we
are descended from the Lombard Cadolingians, who from the tenth to the
twelfth centuries covered themselves with glory by their fidelity to the
German Emperors, and from whom sprung, prior to the year 1100, the
Buonapartes of Treviso and the Buonapartes of Florence, the latter stock
proving by far the more illustrious."

At this the officers began to whisper together and laugh. Orderly
Officer Chauvet asked Berthier behind his hand if the Republican General
felt flattered to possess amongst his ancestors a lot of slaves serving
the Two-headed Eagle, while Lieutenant Thezard was ready to take his
oath the General owed his birth to good _sans-culottes_ and nobody else.
Meanwhile the Canon went on with a long string of boasts concerning the
nobility of his house and lineage.

"Know this, nephew," he finished by saying, "our Florentine ancestors
well deserved their name. They were ever of the _bon parti_, and
steadfast defenders of Mother Church."

At these words, which the old fellow had uttered in a high, clear voice,
the General, who so far had been scarcely listening, gathered his
wandering wits together, and raising his pale, thin face, with its
classically moulded features, threw a piercing look at his interlocutor,
which closed his lips instantly.

"Nay! uncle," he cried, "let us have done with these follies! the rats
of your garret are very welcome to these moth-eaten parchments for me."

Then he added in a voice of brass:

"The only nobility I vaunt is in my deeds. It dates from the 13th
Vendemiaire of Year IV, the day I swept the Royalist Sections with
cannon-shot from the steps of St. Roch. Come, let us drink to the
Republic! 'Tis the arrow of Evander, which falls not to earth again, and
is transformed into a star!"

The officers answered the appeal with a shout of enthusiasm. It was a
moment when Berthier himself felt a Republican's and a Patriot's fir