nraged Legitimist and ferocious Clerical. You give
dinners and hunting parties, and the game is won. I will wager that your
son will marry into a Faubourg St.-Germain family, a family which
descends authentically from the Crusaders.

In order to execute this agreeable buffoonery, you must not forget
certain accessories--particularly portraits of your ancestors. They
should ornament the castle walls where you regale the country nobles. One
must use tact in the selection of this family gallery. There must be no
exaggeration. Do not look too high. Do not claim as a founder of your
race a knight in armor hideously painted, upon wood, with his coat of
arms in one corner of the panel. Bear in mind the date of chivalry. Be
satisfied with the head of a dynasty whose gray beard hangs over a
well-crimped ruff. I saw a very good example of that kind the other day
on the Place Royale. A dog was just showing his disrespect for it as I
passed. You can obtain an ancestor like this in the outskirts of the city
for fifteen francs, if you haggle a little. Or you need not give yourself
so much trouble. Apply to a specialist, Pere Issacar, for instance. He
will procure magnificent ancestors for you; not dear either! If you will
consent to descend to simple magistrates, the price will be
insignificant. Chief justices are dirt cheap. Naturally, if you wish to
be of the military profession, to have eminent clergy among your
antecedents, the price increases. Pere Issacar is the only one who can
give you, at a reasonable rate, ermine-draped bishops, or a colonel with
a Louis XIV wig, and, if you wish it, a blue ribbon and a breast-plate
under his red coat. What produces a good effect in a series of family
portraits is a series of pastels. What would you say to a goggle-eyed
abbe, or an old lady indecently decolletee, or a captain of dragoons
wearing a tigerskin cap (it is ten francs more if he has the cross of St.
Louis)? Pere Issacar knows his business, and always has in reserve thirty
of these portraits in charming frames of the period, made expressly for
him in the Faubourg St.-Antoine, and which have all been buried fifteen
days and riddled with shot, in order to have the musty appearance and
indispensable worm holes.

You can understand now why the estimable Jew, in passing through the
Louvre for his weekly promenade, took an interest in little Maria copying
the charming Marquise de Latour. He was just at this time short of
powdered marqu