dame," said the Baron, smiling, "I have no salt."

The instinct of hospitality prevailed;--she was about to return it.
Might I do an awkward thing? Unhesitatingly. Reversing my glass, I
gave my arm a wider sweep than necessary, and, as it met her hand with
violence, the _saliere_ fell. Before it touched the floor I caught it
There was still a pinch of salt left,--nothing more.

"A thousand pardons!" I said, and restored it to the Baron.

His Excellency beheld it with dismay; it was rare to see him bend over
and scrutinize it with starting eyes.

"Do you find there what Count Arnaklos begs in the song," asked
Delphine,--"the secret of the sea, Monsieur?"

He handed it to the butler, observing, "I find here no"----

"Salt, Monsieur?" replied the man, who did not doubt but all had gone
right, and replenished it.

Had one told me in the morning that no intricate manoeuvres, but a
simple blunder, would effect this, I might have met him in the Bois de
Boulogne.

"We will not quarrel," said my neighbor, lightly, with reference to the
popular superstition.

"Rather propitiate the offended deities by a crumb tossed over the
shoulder," added I.

"Over the left?" asked the Baron, to intimate his knowledge of another
idiom, together with a reproof for my _gaucherie_.

"_A gauche,--quelquefois c'est justement a droit_," I replied.

"Salt in any pottage," said Madame, a little uneasily, "is like surprise
in an individual; it brings out the flavor of every ingredient, so my
cook tells me."

"It is a preventive of palsy," I remarked, as the slight trembling of my
adversary's finger caught my eye.

"And I have noticed that a taste for it is peculiar to those who trace
their blood to Galitzin," continued Madame.

"Let us, therefore, elect a deputation to those mines near Cracow," said
Delphine.

"To our cousins, the slaves there?" laughed her mother.

"I must vote to lay your bill on the table, Mademoiselle," I rejoined.

"But with a _boule blanche_, Monsieur?"

"As the salt has been laid on the floor," said the Baron.

Meanwhile, as this light skirmishing proceeded, my sleeve and Mme. de
St. Cyr's dress were slightly powdered, but I had not seen the diamond.
The Baron, bolder than I, looked under the table, but made no discovery.
I was on the point of dropping my napkin to accomplish a similar
movement, when my accommodating neighbor dropped hers. To restore it, I
stooped. There it lay, large and glowing, the Se