"What do you mean by smelts? They are doubtless some tasteless product of your warm rivers. Know, Monsieur, that these are stroemlings, the finest and most delicate fish in the icy waters of the north. This other fish, which glows like a piece of gold in its porcelain plate, you would find it difficult to call by the correct name. It is a salmon, caught by a skillful hand, and smoked with particular care. Near you is the tongue of a reindeer, prepared by a Laplander, unrivaled in this useful art. This bird, which yet looks fixedly at you with open eyes, though it died two days ago, you might fancy a barn-door fowl, fattened up by the cook. Not so: it is the briar-cock, the honor of our forests. The two fowls in that dish are not a pair of vulgar pullets, but succulent grouse. I will not mention that haunch of sanglier, which, however, is worthy of a royal table; nor of those vegetables, which strangers say are nowhere as finely flavored as they are in our loved Sweden; nor of those berries, gathered last fall on the sides of our hills. Pay some attention, however, to that bread which you break so carelesely with your fingers. It is not coarse and heavy, like that of other countries. It is our kneach-brad, delicate and light as a sheet of paper, and white as the purest flour."
"Have you done?" said M. de Vermondans; "and can you not, as an accompaniment to so many exquisite things, bring us a bottle of claret?"
"Wrong again." said Alete; "as if this beer, prepared from the best barley, the most perfumed hops, yellow as the Baltic, amber and pure as spring-water, was not more valuable than the coarse red fluid you send to such a distance for."
"I agree with you," said Ireneus, who in his turn wished to laugh at the young girl. "It seems to me, that when seated in front of the riches of the north, it would be a profanation to pour out a libation in a foreign beverage. This beer has besides so excellent a flavor, that were there anything like it in France, it is probable that the owners of the Clos de Vaugeot and Medoc would root out their vines to make room for hops and barley."
"You are laughing at me, dear cousin," said Alete; "take care, however."
"Peste!" said M. de Vermondans, "any one who knows you would be rash indeed to excite your ceaseless babble. I do not think that Ireneus, who has more than once proved his courage, is bold enough for that."
"Two royal officers contending against a poor country-girl," said Alete.
"We are not fairly matched, and I will go for the claret."
It was wrong for Alete to leave just then, for the conversation, which hitherto had been gaily sustained, immediately began to languish, and assumed a direction which compelled her to silence.
Ireneus complained of the inroad of democratic ideas, of the trembling and fall of aristocratic institutions, of the authority of right divine, which in his chivalric enthusiasm he looked on as the basis of society.
"Ah," replied Eric, with a tone of voice which seemed aroused by a feeling of affection, "this holy authority will lift itself up from the level of the popular waves which threaten to overwhelm it. It will appear clear and brilliant as our polar star, above the clouds which now surround it. It would subsist in all its power, if it were exercised by men who comprehended the holy duties it imposed on them. Everything connected with this primitive law, with this noble image of patriarchal government, would yet exist, if each member of the great social family would contemplate from a just point of view his own condition, and carry out the consequences in a Christian-like manner.