In the present instance, she was actuated by a feeling of that refined delicacy towards her husband, which ever taught her not only to respect him herself, but to throw a veil even round his foibles, for the purpose of hiding them from the eyes of the others. She had heard my father calmly talk to the Marquis de St. Brie, on the former visit, of his retinue and his vassals; and a slight smile had played about the guest's lip, which my father never saw, but which wounded my mother for him. She instantly determined to sacrifice some part of her system of economy, without attempting any vain display, or going beyond what she could reasonably afford; and the present effect was that which I have described. We dined in general a little after noon; but on the day of the Marquis's arrival, which was looked upon by the servants as one of those occasions of ceremony, when their rights and privileges were to be as strictly enforced as the official tenures at a royal coronation, the announcement of dinner was somewhat delayed by a contest between Houssaye and the _maître d'hôtel_, in regard to which should sound the trumpet. Houssaye grounded his claim upon patent of office, as the trumpeter-general to the Counts of Bigorre; and the _maître d'hôtel_, contended for the honour as a right prescriptive, which he had exercised for thirty years. The _maître d'hôtel_ would certainly have carried the day, being in possession of the brazen tube in dispute; but Houssaye, like a true old soldier, hung upon his flanks, embarrassed his man[oe]uvres, and at length defeated him by a _coup de main_. The _maître d'hôtel_ having possession, as I have said, resolved to exercise his right; and, at the hour appointed, raised the trumpet to his lips, and prepared an energetic breath. His red cheeks swelled till they looked like a ripe pomegranate; his eyes stared as if they would start from their sockets; his long, pimpled nose was nearly eclipsed by its rubicund neighbours, the cheeks, and would hardly have been seen but for a vibratory sort of movement about the end, produced, probably, by the compression of his breath. All announced a most terrible explosion, when suddenly the undaunted Houssaye stepped up, and applying his thumb to the cheek of this unhappy aspirant to _tubicinal_ honours, expelled the breath before the lips were prepared. The cheeks sunk, the eyes relapsed, the nose protruded, and a hollow murmur died along the resonant cavities of the brass--a sort of dirge to the pseudo-trumpeter's defeat.