The sound of those silvery peals of laughter was too vividly in my remembrance to permit me to accept Mr. Gratiot's compliments without a large grain of allowance for a Frenchman's courtesy, but I bowed low in seeming to accept them. Then he introduced me to his companion, who proved not to be Mr. Vigo after all, but Dr. Saugrain, the French émigré so renowned for his learning. I looked at him keenly as I made my bow, for I had heard something of him in Philadelphia, and in Kentucky there had been so many tales of the wonderful things he could do that I think most people looked upon him as a dealer in black arts. But he was in no respect my idea of a Mephisto. He was small and wiry of build, and dressed in black small-clothes, with ruffles of finest lace at wrist and knee.
Black silk stockings showed a well-turned calf in no whit shrunken with age, and his silver shoe-buckles glittered with brilliants. His hair, iron-gray and curly, was tied in a short queue with a black satin ribbon, and beneath a rather narrow and high brow beamed two as kindly blue eyes as it had ever been my lot to meet.
His greeting was most cordial, though there was a merry twinkle in his eye while speaking to me that made me feel he might still be laughing inwardly at my ridiculous descent of Mr. Gratiot's staircase. With a very grand manner indeed, and with much use of his hands, as is the fashion of Frenchmen, he said:
"My dear sir, it mek me mos' proud and mos' 'appy to know you. Vous êtes véritablement un brave. Le capitaine dîne chez moi to-day; I s'all be désolé and inconsolable if he bring not also his ver' dear young frien'." Then, with a sudden and entire change of manner, he laid his finger beside his nose and said in a loud whisper:
"My frien', I would not min' you kill that dog, moi! I lofe 'im not."
But while his words did not sound kind to me, who am such a lover of dogs that nothing but the necessity of self-defense would ever make me lift a hand against one, yet, all the time he spoke, his eyes twinkled more merrily than ever, and I wondered at the man whose manner could change so quickly from the grand seigneur's to that of a king's jester, and I puzzled my brains mightily to know what his connection with the dog could be.