ich he is not,
because he deludes himself--the most incurable and inexcusable of all
deceptions."

And she applied herself again assiduously to her snuffbox, tapping it
peremptorily before opening it, and, with a gloomy eye fixed on space,
she continued:

"In all lands, from the time of Cassandra and Jeremiah up, there have
been prophets. Prophets for good and prophets for ill--of which some few
have been God-appointed, and the sayings of such alone have been
preserved. The rest vanish away into oblivion like chaff before the
wind--never mind what their achievement, what their boast.

"In this nation we have only two true prophets, Calhoun and Clay--both
men of equal might, and resolution, and intellect--gifted as beseems
their vocation, masterful and heroic; and to these all other men are
subordinate in the great designs of Providence."

"Where do you leave Mr. Webster, John Quincy Adams, General Jackson
himself, in such a category, madame?" I asked, eagerly.

"They are doing, or have done, the work God has appointed for them to
do, I suppose, mademoiselle; but they are accessories merely of the
times, and will pass away with the necessities of the moment."

"'The earth has bubbles as the water hath, and these are of them,'" said
Major Favraud aside, between his short, set teeth, nodding to me as he
spoke, and lending the next moment implicit attention to what Madame
Grambeau was saying; for the brief pause she had made for another pinch
of snuff was ended, and she continued impetuously, as if no interval had
occurred:

"Clay is, unconsciously, I trust, for the honor of mankind, fulfilling
his destiny--this great prophet who still refuses to prophesy. He is
entering the wedge for what he declines to admit the possibility of--yet
there must be moments when that eye of power pierces the clouds of
prejudice and party, wherewith it seeks to blind its kingly vision, and
descries the horrors beyond as the result of the acts he is now
committing; and when such moments of clear conviction come to him, the
ambitions tool of a party, I envy not his sensations," and she shook her
head mournfully. "Not Napoleon at St. Helena, not Prometheus on his
rock, were more to be pitied than he! the man whose ambition shall never
know fruition, whose measures shall pass and leave no trace in less than
fifty years after he has ceased to exist--the splendid failure of our
century!"

She ceased for a moment, with her eye fixed on spac