rned into a dream world
after sunset faded.

It was as impossible to come to close terms with this noble of the old
regime as with a butterfly. He alighted on a subject; he waved his
wings, and rose. I felt a clumsy giant while he fluttered around my
head, smiling, mocking, thrusting his pathos to the quick.

"My dear boy, I do not say that I believe in you; I do not observe
etiquette with you. But I am going to tell you a little story about the
Tuileries. You have never seen the palace of the Tuileries?"

I said I had not.

"It has been restored for the use of these Bonapartes. When I say these
Bonapartes, Lazarre, I am not speaking against the Empire. The Empire
gave me back my estates. I was not one of the stringent emigres. My
estates are mine, whoever rules in France. You may consider me a
betwixt-and-betweener. Do so. My dear boy, I am. My heart is with my
dead king. My carcass is very comfortable, both in Paris and on my
ancestral lands. Napoleon likes me as an ornament to his bourgeois
court. I keep my opinion of him to myself. Do you like garlic, my boy?"

I told him I was not addicted to the use of it.

"Garlic is divine. God gave it to man. A hint of it in the appropriate
dish makes life endurable. I carry a piece in a gold box at the bottom
of my vest pocket, that I may occasionally take it out and experience a
sense of gratitude for divine benefits."

He took out his pet lump, rubbed it on the outside of his wine bottle,
poured out a glassful and drank it, smiling adorably at me in ecstasy!

"We were speaking of the Tuileries. You should have seen the place when
it was sacked after the flight of the royal family. No, you should not
have seen it! I am glad you were gone. Mirrors were shattered, and
lusters, vases, china, gold candlesticks, rolled about and were trampled
on the floor. The paintings were stabbed with pikes; tables, screens,
gilt stools, chairs crushed, and carpets cut to pieces; garments of all
kinds strewn and torn; all that was not carried off by pillagers being
thus destroyed. It was yet a horrible sight days after the mob had done
their work, and slaughtered bodies of guards had been carried away, and
commissioners with their clerks and assistants began to restore order."

"Did you see the Tuileries at that time, monsieur?"

"I did. I put on the clothes of one of my peasants, slumped in Jacquot's
wooden shoes, and kept my mouth open as well as I could for the dust.
The fantastic