something he knows not what, by means he knows not how,--ever
willing to throw himself into an enterprise where the prize is great and
the risk greater, and yet never able to warm his wishes into enthusiasm
nor his belief into a conviction: in a word, a Frenchman, born a
Legitimist, reared a Democrat, educated an Imperialist, and turned
adrift upon the world a scoffer. Such men as I am are dangerous
companions; and when they increase, as they are likely to do in our
state of society, will be still more dangerous citizens. But come, my
good friend, don't look dismayed, nor distend your nostrils as if you
were on the scent for a smell of brimstone,--'Satan s'en va!'"

With these words he arose and held out his hand to me. "Don't let your
Napoleonite ardor ooze out too rapidly, Burke, and you 'll be a marshal
of France yet. There are great prizes in the wheel, to be had by those
who strive for them. Adieu!"

"But we shall meet, Duchesne?"

"I hope so. The time may come, perhaps, when we may be intimate without
alarming the police of the department. But, for the present, I am about
to leave Paris; some friends in the South have been kind enough to
invite me to visit them, and I start this afternoon."

We shook hands once more, and Duchesne moved towards the door; then,
turning suddenly about, he said, "Apropos of another matter,--this
Mademoiselle de Lacostellerie.

"What of her?" said I, with some curiosity in my tone.

"Why, I have a kind of half suspicion, ripening into something like an
assurance, that when we meet again she may be Madame Burke."

"What nonsense, my dear friend! the absurdity--"

"There is none whatever. An acquaintance begun like yours is very
suggestive of such a termination. When the lady is saucy and the
gentleman shy, the game stands usually thus: the one needs control and
the other lacks courage. Let them change the cards, and see what comes
of it."

"You are wrong, Duchesne,--all wrong."

"Be it so. I have been so often right, I can afford a false prediction
without losing all my character as prophet. Adieu!"

No sooner was I alone than I sat down to think over what he had said.
The improbability, nay, as it seemed to me, the all but impossibility,
of such an event as he foretold, seemed not less now than when first I
heard it; but somehow I felt a kind of internal satisfaction, a sense of
gratified vanity, to think that to so acute an observer as Duchesne such
a circumstance did not