Bang! bang!
Alas, Madame De Grapion!
It may be recorded that no affair of honor in Louisiana ever left a braver little widow. When Joseph and his doctor pretended to play chess together, but little more than a half-century had elapsed since the fille à la cassette stood before the Grand Marquis and refused to wed. Yet she had been long gone into the skies, leaving a worthy example behind her in twenty years of beautiful widowhood. Her son, the heir and resident of the plantation at Cannes Brulées, at the age of--they do say--eighteen, had married a blithe and pretty lady of Franco-Spanish extraction, and, after a fair length of life divided between campaigning under the brilliant young Galvez and raising unremunerative indigo crops, had lately lain down to sleep, leaving only two descendants--females--how shall we describe them?--a Monk and a Fille à la Cassette. It was very hard to have to go leaving his family name snuffed out and certain Grandissime-ward grievances burning.
"There are so many Grandissimes," said the weary-eyed Frowenfeld, "I cannot distinguish between--I can scarcely count them."
"Well, now," said the doctor, "let me tell you, don't try. They can't do it themselves. Take them in the mass--as you would shrimps."