f his tongue, how many
teeth he had left; the grocer, pale as his own tallow candles, examined
his throat with a trembling hand, to make sure that the fangs of the
terrible Sultan had not penetrated beyond the cravat; finally, the
Captain gnawed his mustache, but dared not manifest his fury otherwise."

This energetic interference of the baron and his two aid-de-camps, biped
and quadruped, and the fall of the tree of liberty, which the rioters,
superstitious in spite of their republicanism, look upon as a bad omen,
put an end to the disturbance. The disaffected disperse, and M. de
Vaudrey enters his nephew's house, where an amusing scene occurs between
him and Madame de Bonvalot. Then come a robbery and a fire, and
abundance of incidents--some tolerably new in conception, all very
pleasant in narration. The good sense, perspicacity and straightforward
dealing of the baron, subjugate every one. He unmasks the fictitious
viscount, cures his nephew of his electioneering ambition, and the
painted dowager of her longing for an invite to the Tuileries; and
adopts Froidevaux--whose father had saved his life at Leipsic, and who
has himself picked the baron out of a burning house--as his son and
heir, thus rendering him a suitable husband for the pretty Victorine.
The story ends, as all proper-behaved novels should end, with the
discomfiture of the wicked, and a prospect of many years of happiness
for the virtuous. In this agreeable perspective, Madame de Bonvalot is a
sharer. Having, by the adoption of Froidevaux, alienated the greater
part of his fortune from his nephew's children, the baron is resolved to
secure them the reversion of their grandmother's ample jointure. But
Madame de Bonvalot, whose wrinkles are hidden by her rouge, forgets the
half century that has passed over her head, and hankers after matrimony.
To preserve her from it, M. de Vaudrey commences a course of delicate
attentions, sufficiently marked to prevent her favouring other admirers,
but duly regulated by thermometer, and warranted never to rise to
marrying point. And the fall of the curtain leaves the humorous old
soldier of fifty-five and the vain coquette of fifty, fairly embarked
upon the tepid and rose-coloured stream of flirtation; he quizzing her,
she admiring him--she thinking of her wedding, he only of her will. A
new and ingenious idea, worthy of a French novelist, and which, we
apprehend, could by no possibility have occurred to any other.

W