sed her yesterday upon the Rue Rivoli, with the
Russian ambassador's footman at her back, but she only touched him with
her silks.

Simp studied a profession, and was a volunteer counsel in the memorable
case of Jeems Pinckney against Jeems Rutledge. His speech, on that
occasion, occupied in delivery just three minutes, and set the
court-room in a roar. He paid the village editor ten dollars to compose
it, and the same sum to publish it.

"If you could learn it for me," said Simp, anxiously, "I would give you
twenty dollars."

This, his first and last public appearance, was conditional to the
receipt from his mother, of six thousand acres of land and eighty
negroes. It might have been a close calculation for a mathematician to
know how many black sweat-drops, how many strokes of the rawhide, went
into the celebrated dinner at the Maison Doree, wherein Master Simp and
only his lady had thirty-four courses, and eleven qualities of wine, and
a bill of eight hundred francs.

In that prosperous era, his inalienable comrade had been Mr. Andy Plade,
who now stood beside him, intensely absorbed.

Of late Mr. Plade's affection had been transferred to Hugenot, the only
possessor of an entire franc in the chamber. Hugenot was a short-set
individual, in pumps and an eye-glass, who had been but a few days in
the city. He was decidedly a man of sentiment. He called the Confederacy
"ow-ah cause," and claimed to have signed the call for the first
secession meeting in the South.

He asserted frankly that he was of French extraction, but only hinted
that he was of noble blood. He had been a hatter, but carefully ignored
the fact; and, having run the blockade with profitable cargoes fourteen
times, had settled down to be a respectable trader between Havre and
Nassau. Mr. Plade shared much of the sentiment and some of the money of
this illustrious personage.

There were rumors abroad that Plade himself had great, but embarrassed,
fortunes.

He was one of the hundred thousand chevaliers who hail the advent of war
as something which will hide their nothingness.

"I knew it," said Auburn Risque, at length, pinching the ball between
his hard palms as if it were the creature of his will. "My system is
good; yours do not validate themselves. You are novices at gambling; I
am an old blackleg." It was as he had said; the method of betting which
he proposed had seemed to be successful. He staked upon colors; never
upon numbers; and alte