at them
with an air of the utmost astonishment, but I made signs to Madame that I
thought them all false. The Count felt for something in his pocketbook,
about twice as large as a spectacle-case, and, at length, drew out two or
three little paper packets, which he unfolded, and exhibited a superb
ruby. He threw on the table, with a contemptuous air, a little cross of
green and white stones. I looked at it and said, "That is not to be
despised." I put it on, and admired it greatly. The Count begged me to
accept it. I refused--he urged me to take it. Madame then refused it
for me. At length, he pressed it upon me so warmly that Madame, seeing
that it could not be worth above forty Louis, made me a sign to accept
it. I took the cross, much pleased at the Count's politeness; and, some
days after, Madame presented him with an enamelled box, upon which was
the portrait of some Grecian sage (whose name I don't recollect), to whom
she compared him. I skewed the cross to a jeweller, who valued it at
sixty-five Louis. The Count offered to bring Madame some enamel
portraits, by Petitot, to look at, and she told him to bring them after
dinner, while the King was hunting. He shewed his portraits, after which
Madame said to him, "I have heard a great deal of a charming story you
told two days ago, at supper, at M. le Premier's, of an occurrence you
witnessed fifty or sixty years ago." He smiled and said, "It is rather
long."--"So much the better," said she, with an air of delight. Madame
de Gontaut and the ladies came in, and the door was shut; Madame made a
sign to me to sit down behind the screen. The Count made many apologies
for the ennui which his story would, perhaps, occasion. He said,
"Sometimes one can tell a story pretty well; at other times it is quite a
different thing."

"At the beginning of this century, the Marquis de St. Gilles was
Ambassador from Spain to the Hague. In his youth he had been
particularly intimate with the Count of Moncade, a grandee of Spain, and
one of the richest nobles of that country. Some months after the
Marquis's arrival at the Hague, he received a letter from the Count,
entreating him, in the name of their former friendship, to render him the
greatest possible service. 'You know,' said he, 'my dear Marquis, the
mortification I felt that the name of Moncade was likely to expire with
me. At length, it pleased heaven to hear my prayers, and to grant me a
son: he gave early pr