the
easy price of acquiescence in these sentiments, the stranger hears one
of the most authentic, best-remembered, most popular of the many
traditions of the bad old times "before General Bonaparte," as
Giraudier, who has no sympathy with any later designation of _le grand
homme_, calls the Emperor, whose statue one can perceive--a speck in the
distance--from the threshold of the _pharmacie_.

The Marquis de Senanges, in the days of the triumph of the great
Revolution, was fortunate enough to be out of France, and wise enough to
remain away from that country, though he persisted, long after the old
_regime_ was as dead as the Ptolemies, in believing it merely suspended,
and the Revolution a lamentable accident of vulgar complexion, but
happily temporary duration. The Marquis de Senanges, who affected the
_style regence_, and was the politest of infidels and the most refined
of voluptuaries, got on indifferently in inappreciative foreign parts;
but the members of his family--his brother and sisters, two of whom were
guillotined, while the third escaped to Savoy and found refuge there in
a convent of her order--got on exceedingly ill in France. If the
_ci-devant_ Marquis had had plenty of money to expend in such feeble
imitations of his accustomed pleasures as were to be had out of Paris,
he would not have been much affected by the fate of his relatives. But
money became exceedingly scarce; the Marquis had actually beheld many of
his peers reduced to the necessity of earning the despicable but
indispensable article after many ludicrous fashions. And the duration of
this absurd upsetting of law, order, privilege, and property began to
assume unexpected and very unpleasant proportions.

The Chateau de Senanges, with its surrounding lands, was confiscated to
the Nation, during the third year of the "emigration" of the Marquis de
Senanges; and the greater part of the estate was purchased by a thrifty,
industrious, and rich _avocat_, named Prosper Alix, a widower with an
only daughter. Prosper Alix enjoyed the esteem of the entire
neighborhood. First, he was rich; secondly, he was of a taciturn
disposition, and of a neutral tint in politics. He had done well under
the old _regime_ and, he was doing well under the new--thank God, or the
Supreme Being, or the First Cause, or the goddess Reason herself, for
all;--he would have invoked Dagon, Moloch, or Kali, quite as readily as
the Saints and the Madonna, who has gone so utterly