dt is said to have heard
Alexander Hamilton remark that all the German lacked of being great was
interest in the noble game of politics. It was true of Schmidt. The war
of parties merely amused him, with their honest dread of a monarchy,
their terror of a bonded debt, their disgust at the abominable
imposition of a tax on freemen, and, above all, an excise tax on whisky.
Jefferson, with keen intellect, was trying to keep the name Republican
for the would-be Democrats, and while in office had rebuked Genet and
kept Fauchet in order, so that, save for the smaller side of him and the
blinding mind fog of personal and party prejudice, he would have been
still more valuable in the distracted cabinet he had left.

Schmidt looked on it all with tranquillity, and while he heard of the
horrors of the Terror with regret for individual suffering, regarded
that strange drama much as an historian looks back on the records of the
past.

Seeing this and the man's interest in the people near to him, in
flowers, nature, and books, his attitude of mind in regard to the vast
world changes seemed singular to the more intense character of De
Courval. It had for him, however, its value in the midst of the turmoil
of a new nation and the temptations an immense prosperity offered to a
people who were not as yet acclimated to the air of freedom.

In fact Schmidt's indifference, or rather the neutrality of a mind not
readily biased, seemed to set him apart, and to enable him to see with
sagacity the meaning and the probable results of what appeared to some
in America like the beginning of a fatal evolution of ruin.

Their companionship had now the qualities of one of those rare and
useful friendships between middle age and youth, seen now and then
between a father and son, with similar tastes. They were much together,
and by the use of business errands and social engagements the elder man
did his share in so occupying De Courval as to limit his chances of
seeing Margaret Swanwick; nor was she entirely or surely displeased. Her
instincts as a woman made her aware of what might happen at any time.
She knew, too, what would then be the attitude of the repellent Huguenot
lady. Her pride of caste was recognized by Margaret with the
distinctness of an equal but different pride, and with some resentment
at an aloofness which, while it permitted the expression of gratitude,
seemed to draw between Mrs. Swanwick and herself a line of impassable
formal