y_ grandfather made shoes. I was quite poor when he
married me. I was only sixteen."

"What you say?" said a railroad-hand who knew a little English. "You say
you are not some aristos?"

"No, sir," said I: "these ladies claim to be Americans and republicans."

"Vive la Republique!" cried the man.

"Vive la Republique!" quickly echoed Hermione.

"C'est bien! c'est bien!" cried another, raising his lantern to her
blanched and beautiful face.

"You will let us all pass, monsieur?" she said persuasively: "you will
even be our escort a little way. We will pay handsomely for your
protection."

Before he could answer her two or three fellows, more drunk than the
rest, burst out with a proposition: "She says they are not aristos, but
republicans. Let her prove it. She cannot, if she be a true republican,
refuse to kiss her fellow-patriots."

I started and was about to knock the rascal down with the bag of
diamonds.

But Hermione laid a restraining hand upon my arm. "Gentlemen," she said
in clear tones and perfect French, "it is quite true that we are
Americans and republicans. We wish you well, and if it be for the good
of France to be free under a republican form of government, no one can
wish her prosperity more than ourselves. But in our free country,
messieurs, a woman is held free to give her kiss to whom she will, and
according to our custom she gives it only to her betrothed or to her
husband." Here stooping she picked up a little boy who had worked
himself into the forefront of the crowd, and before I knew what she was
about to do she had lifted him upon the cart beside her. She looked a
moment steadily at the men around her, holding the boy's hand in both
her own, then turning toward him and pressing her lips upon his face,
she said, "Messieurs, I kiss your representative: I cannot embrace a
multitude;" and placed a piece of money in the gamin's hand.

For a moment there was some doubt what view the crowd might take of
this, but her beauty, her fearlessness, and, above all, the awe inspired
by her womanliness, prevailed. They shouted "Vive la Republique!"

"With all my heart," replied Hermione. "Now shout for me, gentlemen:
Vive la Republique des Etats Unis!"

They were completely won. A French crowd is never dangerous or
unmanageable till it has tasted blood, and besides it has--or at least
in those days it used to have--_sentiments_, to which it was possible
with a little tact to appeal successfully.