Colonel Silky was evidently struck with my appearance. An officer of his readiness and practice saw at once that I might be made to diminish no small part of the ways and means of his present campaign, and precisely in proportion as he admired me, he began to look cold and indifferent. This management could not deceive me, my clairvoyance defying any such artifices; but it had a sensible effect on Desiree, who, happening very much to want money for a particular object just at that moment, determined, on the spot, to abate no less than fifty francs from the price she had intended to ask. This was deducting five francs more than poor Adrienne got for the money she had expended for her beautiful lace, and for all her toil, sleepless nights, and tears; a proof of the commissionaire's scale of doing business. The bargain was now commenced in earnest, offering an instructive scene of French protestations, assertions, contradictions and volubility on one side, and of cold, seemingly phlegmatic, but wily Yankee calculation, on the other. Desiree had set her price at one hundred and fifty francs, after abating the fifty mentioned, and Colonel Silky had early made up his mind to give only one hundred. After making suitable allowances for my true value before I was embellished, the cost of the lace and of the work, Desiree was not far from the mark; but the Colonel saw that she wanted money, and he knew that two napoleons and a half, with his management, would carry him from Paris to Havre. It is true he had spent the difference that morning on an eye-glass that he never used, or when he did it was only to obscure his vision; but the money was not lost, as it aided in persuading the world he was a colonel and was afflicted with that genteel defect, an imperfect vision. These extremes of extravagance and meanness were not unusual in his practice. The one, in truth, being a consequence of the other. {management = in Cooper's time, a word suggesting conniving or unscrupulous manipulation; Havre = le Havre, an important French port} "You forget the duty, Desiree," observed the military trader; "this compromise law is a thousand times worse than any law we have ever had in America." {compromise law = the American Tariff Act of 1832, which reduced tariffs on some items, but retained the high customs duties on the import of textile products} "The duty!" repeated the woman, with an incredulous smile; "monsieur, you are not so young as to pay any duty on a pocket-handkerchief! Ma foi, I will bring twenty--oui, a thousand from England itself, and the douaniers shall not stop one." {douaniers = customs officials} "Ay, but we don't smuggle in America," returned the colonel, with an aplomb that might have done credit to Vidocq himself; "in our republican country the laws are all in all." {Vidocq = Francois Vidocq (1775-1857), a senior French police official who was secretly a burglar, and who "investigated" his own crimes for a long time before being exposed}