friends would be
infinitely more amusing than the noblest society ever chronicled in the
Morning Post; but we were neither sufficiently familiar with the French
language to make conversation in that tongue as pleasant to us as
talking in our own; and so were content with Florac's description of his
compatriots, which the Vicomte delivered in that charming French-English
of which he was a master.

However threadbare in his garments, poor in purse, and eccentric in
morals our friend was, his manners were always perfectly gentlemanlike,
and he draped himself in his poverty with the grace of a Spanish
grandee. It must be confessed, that the grandee loved the estaminet
where he could play billiards with the first comer; that he had a
passion for the gambling-house; that he was a loose and disorderly
nobleman: but, in whatever company he found himself, a certain kindness,
simplicity, and politeness distinguished him always. He bowed to the
damsel who sold him a penny cigar, as graciously as to a duchess; he
crushed a manant's impertinence or familiarity as haughtily as his noble
ancestors ever did at the Louvre, at Marli, or Versailles. He declined
to obtemperer to his landlady's request to pay his rent, but he refused
with a dignity which struck the woman with awe; and King Alfred,
over the celebrated muffin (on which Gandish and other painters have
exercised their genius), could not have looked more noble than Florac
in a robe-de-chambre, once gorgeous, but shady now as became its owner's
clouded fortunes; toasting his bit of bacon at his lodgings, when the
fare even of his table-d'hote had grown too dear for him.

As we know from Gandish's work, that better times were in store for the
wandering monarch, and that the officers came acquainting him that his
people demanded his presence a grands cris, when of course King Alfred
laid down the toast and resumed the sceptre; so in the case of Florac,
two humble gentlemen, inhabitants of Lamb Court, and members of the
Upper temple, had the good luck to be the heralds as it were,
nay indeed, the occasion, of the rising fortunes of the Prince de
Moncontour. Florac had informed us of the death of his cousin the Duc
d'Ivry, by whose demise the Vicomte's father, the old Count de Florac,
became the representative of the house of Ivry, and possessor, through
his relative's bequest, of an old chateau still more gloomy and spacious
than the count's own house in the Faubourg St. Germain--a