d young man into a desperate adventurer, it came
in the aspect of a petty accident, which but facilitated his reception
at the hands of the companions who crowded around him.

"Have I not seen you at Court? Were you not presented six months ago in
the Oeil de Boeuf?" inquired de Blair.

"I am only a provincial," he answered. "I know nothing of the Court."

"When I first came from Dauphiny up to Versailles," laughed the Count de
Bellecour, "I spoke such a _patois_ they thought I was a horse."

"You come from Canada? Tell us about the Revolution in the English
colonies. It is not a new affair, but we army men are always talking
about it."

Germain ventured on an epigram.

"That was simple; it was the coming of age of a continent."

"A war of liberty against oppression?"

"Rather, gentlemen, a war of human nature against human nature. We had
experience of the armies of both sides in our Province."

"Would I had been there with Lafayette!" another Guardsman cried.

"You, d'Estaing!" exclaimed Grancey. "You would cry if an Englishman
spoiled your ruffles!"

"Sir, my second shall visit you this evening!"

"Pray, you twin imitations of Modesty-in-Person, let us have a real
tragediette in steel and blood," put in d'Amoreau, the fifth Life Guard.

D'Estaing and Grancey, drawing swords, lunged at each other. D'Amoreau
and the Count de Bellecour each ran behind one of them and acted as a
second, the Chevalier de Blair standing umpire, when the Abbe, the
Princess's reader, entered. The blades were thrust, mock respectfully,
back into their scabbards, and they all bowed low to the ecclesiastic.

A short, spare man of thirty with a cadaverous face, whose sharp,
lustreless black eyes, thin projecting nose, and mouth like a sardonic
mere line, combined with a jesuitical downwardness of look, made one
feel uneasy--such was the Abbe Jude as he appeared to Germain's brief
first glance.

"Never mind, gentlemen; one less of you would not be missed," he
retorted to their obeisance.

"You would like a death-mass fee, Abbe?"

The Canadian, brought up to other customs, wondered how a priest could
be addressed with such contempt by good Catholics.

"Is he a monk or a cure?" he inquired, when the reader had passed on.

"He is nothing," answered d'Estaing, with clear eye and scornful lip.
"Paris is devastated by fellows calling themselves abbes. They have no
connection with the Church, except a hole in the top of their wigs.