in France. When the
dregs of the _bas peuple_ rose to the surface of the revolution,
commenced by the sound middle classes, we regarded the scum of
aristocracy as the smaller of the two evils. As soon as the true element
had ceased to assert itself in France, I fled forever from a land of
bloodshed and misrule, and took shelter under the broad wing of your
boasted American eagle."

"Which still continues to flap over you shelteringly, madame," I
rejoined, somewhat flippantly, I fear, "and will to the end, no doubt;
for, in its very organization, our country can never be subjected to the
fluctuations of other lands--revolt and revolution."

"I am not so certain of this," she observed, shaking her white head
slowly as she spoke, and, lifting a pinch of snuff from her
tortoise-shell box (the companion of her whole married life, as she
acquainted us), she inhaled it with an air of meditative
self-complacency, then offered it quietly to the gentlemen, who were
still sitting over their wine and peaches; passing by Marion, Alice
Durand, and myself, completely, in this ovation.

"Good snuff is not to be sneezed at," said Major Favraud. "None offered
to young ladies, it seems," taking a huge pinch, and thrusting it
bravely up his nostrils, as one takes a spoonful of unpleasant medicine.
Then contradicting his own assertion immediately afterward, he succeeded
in expelling most of it in a series of violent sternutatory spasms,
which left him breathless, red-faced, and watery-eyed, with a
handkerchief much begrimed.

But Madame Grambeau seemed not to have noticed this ridiculous
proceeding, which, of course, created momentary mirth at the expense of
the penitent Favraud, to whom Dr. Durand repeated the tantalizing
saying, that "it is a royal privilege to take snuff gracefully"--giving
the example as he spoke, in a mock-heroic manner, quite as absurd and
irrelevant as Favraud's own.

Lost in deep thought, and gently tapping her snuffbox as she mused--the
tripod of her inspiration, as it seemed--Madame Grambeau sat silently,
with what memories of the past and what insight into the future none can
know save those like herself grown hoary with wisdom and experience.

At last she spoke, addressing her remarks to me, as though the careless
words I had hazarded had just been spoken, and the attention of her
hearers undiverted by divers absurdities--among others the affected
gambols of Duganne--anxious to place himself in an agreea