and stirred to a brisker
pulsing the blood in his meagre veins. But his interest in what was
going forward revived again--his legs being, also, by that time well
warmed--when his own praises were sounded by his daughter: in the story
of how he stopped the runaway horse on the very brink of the precipice
at Les Baux; and how his wife all the while sat calmly beside him in the
cart, cool and silent, and showing no sign of fear.

When Elizo had finished this story she whispered a word to Magali and
Nanoun that sent them laughing out of the room; and presently Magali
came back again arrayed in the identical dress which had been worn by
the heroine of the adventure--who had perked and plumed herself not a
little while her daughter told about it--when the runaway horse so
nearly had galloped her off the Baux rock into Eternity. It was the
Provencal costume--with full sleeves and flaring cap--of sixty years
back; but a little gayer than the strict Arles dress of that period,
because her mother was not of Arles but of Beaucaire. It was not so
graceful, especially in the head-dress, as the costume of the present
day; nor nearly so becoming--as Magali showed by looking a dozen years
older after putting it on. But Magali, even with a dozen years added,
could not but be charming; and I think that the little old bowed
grandmother--who still was a bit of a coquette at eighty--would have
been better pleased had she been spared this encounter with what must
have seemed to her very like a meeting with her own young ghost, raised
suddenly from the depths of the distant past.

[Illustration: MAGALI]

By long experience, gained on many such occasions, the Vidame knew that
the culminating point of the supper would be reached when the family
drummer swam the river and headed the French charge at Arcolo.
Therefore had he reserved until a later period, when the excitement
incident to the revival of that honourable bit of family history should
have subsided, a joy-giving bomb-shell of his own that he had all ready
to explode. An American or an Englishman never could have fired it
without something in the way of speech-making; but the Vidame was of a
shy temper, and speech-making was not in his line. When the chatter
caused by Magali's costuming had lulled a little, and there came a
momentary pause in the talk, he merely reached diagonally across the
table and touched glasses with Esperit and said simply: "To your good
health, Monsieur the Su