ip of paper; the print was
very small, and he longed to take out his spectacles, but he thought
that would make him look old. However, he spelled through the motto with
some difficulty:--

"Comme elle fait soumettre un coeur,
En refusant son doux hommage,
On peut traiter la coquette en vainqueur;
De la beauty modeste on cherit l'esclavage."

[The coquette, who subjugates a heart, yet refuses its tender
homage, one may treat as a conqueror: of modest beauty we cherish
the slavery.]

"I present it to Mademoiselle," said he, laying the motto solemnly in
Adele's plate, upon a little mountain of chestnut-husks.

"It is very pretty," said she, looking down.

"It is very a propos," whispered the epicier, caressing the peruque a
little too roughly in his emotion. Mr. Love gave him a kick under the
table, and put his finger to his own bald head, and then to his nose,
significantly. The intelligent epicier smoothed back the irritated
peruque.

"Are you fond of bon-bons, Mademoiselle Adele? I have a very fine stock
at home," said Monsieur Goupille. Mademoiselle Adele de Courval sighed:
"Helas! they remind me of happier days, when I was a petite and my
dear grandmamma took me in her lap and told me how she escaped the
guillotine: she was an emigree, and you know her father was a marquis."

The epicier bowed and looked puzzled. He did not quite see the
connection between the bon-bons and the guillotine. "You are triste,
Monsieur," observed Madame Beavor, in rather a piqued tone, to the Pole,
who had not said a word since the roti.

"Madame, an exile is always triste: I think of my pauvre pays."

"Bah!" cried Mr. Love. "Think that there is no exile by the side of a
belle dame."

The Pole smiled mournfully.

"Pull it," said Madame Beavor, holding a cracker to the patriot, and
turning away her face.

"Yes, madame; I wish it were a cannon in defence of La Pologne."

With this magniloquent aspiration, the gallant Sovolofski pulled
lustily, and then rubbed his fingers, with a little grimace, observing
that crackers were sometimes dangerous, and that the present combustible
was d'une force immense.

"Helas! J'ai cru jusqu'a ce jour
Pouvoir triompher de l'amour,"

[Alas! I believed until to-day that I could triumph over love.]

said Madame Beavor, reading the motto. "What do you say to that?"

"Madame, there is no triumph for La Pologne!" Madame Beavor ut