"I am, your Excellency."

"Is your nation to overrun the earth?" said the Baron. "Every morning
when I ride through the streets it seems to me that more Americans have
come. Pardieu, I declare every day that, if it were not for the
Americans, I should have ten years more of life ahead of me." I could
not resist the temptation to glance at Madame la Vicomtesse. Her eyes,
half closed, betrayed an amusement that was scarce repressed.

"Come, Monsieur le Baron," she said, "you and I have like beliefs upon
most matters. We have both suffered at the hands of people who have
mistaken a fiend for a Lady."

"You would have me believe, Madame," the Baron put in, with a wit I had
not thought in him, "that Mr. Ritchie knows a lady when he sees one. I
can readily believe it."

Madame laughed.

"He at least has a negative knowledge," she replied. "And he has brought
into New Orleans no coins, boxes, or clocks against your Excellency's
orders with the image and superscription of the Goddess in whose name all
things are done. He has not sung 'Ca Ira' at the theatres, and he
detests the tricolored cockades as much as you do."

The Baron laughed in spite of himself, and began to thaw. There was a
little more friendliness in his next glance at me.

"What images have you brought in, Mr. Ritchie?" he asked. "We all
worship the sex in some form, however misplaced our notions of it."

There is not the least doubt that, for the sake of the Vicomtesse, he was
trying to be genial, and that his remark was a purely random one. But
the roots of my hair seemed to have taken fire. I saw the Baron as in a
glass, darkly. But I kept my head, principally because the situation had
elements of danger.

"The image of Madame la Vicomtesse, Monsieur," I said.

"Dame!" exclaimed his Excellency, eying me with a new interest, "I did
not suspect you of being a courtier."

"No more he is, Monsieur le Baron," said the Vicomtesse, "for he speaks
the truth."

His Excellency looked blank. As for me, I held my breath, wondering what
coup Madame was meditating.

"Mr. Ritchie brought down from Kentucky a miniature of me by Boze, that
was painted in a costume I once wore at Chantilly."

"Comment! diable," exclaimed the Baron. "And how did such a thing get
into Kentucky, Madame?"

"You have brought me to the point," she replied, "which is no small
triumph for your Excellency. Mr. Ritchie bought the miniature from that
most estimable of my relations,