ve got into the habit
of. I prefer the period when a _mot_ did as much and more than a
discharge of _mitraille_, and men's _esprit_ and talent succeeded better
than a strong sword-arm or a seat on horseback. There were gentlemen
in France once, my dear Burke. Ay, _parbleu!_ and ladies too,--not
marchionesses of the drum-head nor countesses of the bivouac, but women
in whom birth heightened beauty, whose loveliness had the added charm of
high descent beaming from their bright eyes and sitting throned on their
lofty brows; before whom our mustached marshals had stood trembling and
ashamed,--these men who lounge so much at ease in the _salons_ of the
Tuileries! Let me help you to this _salmi_; it is _a la Louis Quinze_,
and worthy of the Regency itself. Well, then, a glass of Burgundy."

"Your friend Monsieur Jacotot seems somewhat of an original," said I,
half desirous to change a topic which I always felt an unpleasant one.

"You are not wrong; he is so. Jacotot is a thorough Frenchman; at
least, he has had the fortune to mix up in his destiny those extremes of
elevated sentiment and absurdity which go very far to compose the life
of my good countrymen. I must tell you a short anecdote--But
shall we adjourn to the terrace? for, to prevent the interruption of
servants, I have ordered our dessert there."

This was a most agreeable proposal; and so, having seated ourselves in
a little arbor of orange-shrubs, with a view of the river and the Palace
gardens beneath us, Duchesne thus began:--

"I am going somewhat far back in history; but have no fears on that
head, Burke,--my story is a very brief one. There was, once upon a time,
in France, a monarch of some repute, called Louis the Fourteenth; a man,
if fame be not unjust, who possessed the most kingly qualities of which
we have any record in books. He was brave, munificent, high-minded,
ardent, selfish, cruel, and ungrateful, beyond any other man in his own
dominions; and, like people with such gifts, he had the good fortune to
attach men to him just as firmly and devotedly as though he was not in
his heart devoid of every principle of friendship and affection. I need
not tell you what the ladies of his reign thought of him; my present
business is with the ruder sex.

"Among the courtiers of the day was a certain Vicomte Arnoud de Gency,
a young man who, at the age of eighteen, won his grade of colonel at the
siege of Besancon by an act of coolness and courage worthy r