"Four, madame," corrected the visitor. "Thanks, they are very well."
They spoke in French, for although she understood English she never condescended to use it. Their conference begun each time by her inquiry after his seven children.
"And madame, I hope she is comfortable to-day?"
"I neither sleep nor eat," declared tante-gra'mère. "And with the streets full of a shouting rabble, there is no comfort to be had in Kaskaskia."
"We are rather noisy to-day. But we are very earnest in this matter. We want to be separated from the Indiana Territory and be made an independent State."
Tante-gra'mère caught up her whip, and cracked it so suddenly on the back of her little page, who was prying into a wall closet, that he leaped like a frog, and fell on all fours at the opposite corner of the hearth. His grandmother, the black woman, put him behind her, and looked steadily at their tyrant. She sat on the floor like an Indian; and she was by no means a soft, full-blooded African. High cheek-bones and lank coarse hair betrayed the half-breed. Untamed and reticent, without the drollery of the black race, she had even a Pottawatomie name, Watch-e-kee, which French usage shortened to Wachique.
Tante-gra'mère put this sullen slave in motion and made her bring a glass of wine for Colonel Menard. The colonel was too politic to talk to Angélique before her elder, though she had not yet answered his proposal. He had offered himself through her father, and granted her all the time she could require for making up her mind. The colonel knew of her sudden decisions against so many Kaskaskians that he particularly asked her to take time. Two dimpling grooves were cut in his cheeks by the smile which hovered there, as he rose to drink the godmother's health, and she said,—
"Angélique, you may leave the room."
Angélique left the room, and he drew his chair toward the autocrat for the conference she expected.
"It is very kind of you, madame," said Colonel Menard, "to give me this chance of speaking to you alone."