le"--le gens forts--were in her opinion equal,
all the world over. Newman listened to her with an attention at once
beguiled and irritated. He wondered what the deuce she, too, was
driving at, with her hope that he would not be afraid of her and her
protestations of equality. In so far as he could understand her, she was
wrong; a silly, rattling woman was certainly not the equal of a sensible
man, preoccupied with an ambitious passion. Madame de Bellegarde stopped
suddenly, and looked at him sharply, shaking her fan. "I see you don't
believe me," she said, "you are too much on your guard. You will not
form an alliance, offensive or defensive? You are very wrong; I could
help you."

Newman answered that he was very grateful and that he would certainly
ask for help; she should see. "But first of all," he said, "I must help
myself." And he went to join Madame de Cintre.

"I have been telling Madame de la Rochefidele that you are an American,"
she said, as he came up. "It interests her greatly. Her father went over
with the French troops to help you in your battles in the last century,
and she has always, in consequence, wanted greatly to see an American.
But she has never succeeded till to-night. You are the first--to her
knowledge--that she has ever looked at."

Madame de la Rochefidele had an aged, cadaverous face, with a falling of
the lower jaw which prevented her from bringing her lips together, and
reduced her conversations to a series of impressive but inarticulate
gutturals. She raised an antique eyeglass, elaborately mounted in chased
silver, and looked at Newman from head to foot. Then she said something
to which he listened deferentially, but which he completely failed to
understand.

"Madame de la Rochefidele says that she is convinced that she must have
seen Americans without knowing it," Madame de Cintre explained. Newman
thought it probable she had seen a great many things without knowing it;
and the old lady, again addressing herself to utterance, declared--as
interpreted by Madame de Cintre--that she wished she had known it.

At this moment the old gentleman who had been talking to the elder
Madame de Bellegarde drew near, leading the marquise on his arm. His
wife pointed out Newman to him, apparently explaining his remarkable
origin. M. de la Rochefidele, whose old age was rosy and rotund, spoke
very neatly and clearly, almost as prettily, Newman thought, as M.
Nioche. When he had been enlightened, h