“Is your nation to overrun the earth?” said the Baron. “Every morning when I ride through the streets it seems to me that more Americans have come. Pardieu, I declare every day that, if it were not for the Americans, I should have ten years more of life ahead of me.” I could not resist the temptation to glance at Madame la Vicomtesse. Her eyes, half closed, betrayed an amusement that was scarce repressed.
“Come, Monsieur le Baron,” she said, “you and I have like beliefs upon most matters. We have both suffered at the hands of people who have mistaken a fiend for a Lady.”
“You would have me believe, Madame,” the Baron put in, with a wit I had not thought in him, “that Mr. Ritchie knows a lady when he sees one. I can readily believe it.”
Madame laughed.
“He at least has a negative knowledge,” she replied. “And he has brought into New Orleans no coins, boxes, or clocks against your Excellency's orders with the image and superscription of the Goddess in whose name all things are done. He has not sung 'Ça Ira' at the theatres, and he detests the tricolored cockades as much as you do.”
The Baron laughed in spite of himself, and began to thaw. There was a little more friendliness in his next glance at me.
“What images have you brought in, Mr. Ritchie?” he asked. “We all worship the sex in some form, however misplaced our notions of it.”
There is not the least doubt that, for the sake of the Vicomtesse, he was trying to be genial, and that his remark was a purely random one. But the roots of my hair seemed to have taken fire. I saw the Baron as in a glass, darkly. But I kept my head, principally because the situation had elements of danger.
“The image of Madame la Vicomtesse, Monsieur,” I said.
“Dame!” exclaimed his Excellency, eying me with a new interest, “I did not suspect you of being a courtier.”