It seemed an amiable and affectionate bird, however, although with its yellowish crest, and unfeathered form, it looked very much like one of those meagre dowagers whom we see at parties with dresses a great deal too much cut down for the satisfaction of the beholders. It continued repeating in a playful and endearing tone, “petit coquin, petit coquin!” as if it imagined the epithet to imply the greatest tenderness. While the words were yet in its beak, however, and before any regular conversation had begun between us, the party was augmented by another gentleman carrying in his hand a round hat with three broad bands, which was generally one of the signs or symbols of a man well provided in official situations. He was a stout and self-important, but evidently a very keen personage. He was one of those for whom trifles have much importance, not from any peculiar capacity for dealing in details, but because a natural tendency of the mind of man to attach a certain degree of magnitude to all he observes himself had not been properly corrected in his youth. The bird was still rhyming, “petit coquin, petit coquin,” and advancing at once toward me with an air of jovial frankness, he caught me by the arm, saying, “Ah, little rogue, the bird knows you, it seems. Now, you are some young aristocrat, I will warrant.” Now it so happened, that I made the exact answer which was required under the circumstances. Let it be understood that I had received no instructions whatever; that Father Bonneville had never even touched upon the subject of politics in his own house; that while deploring excesses, and excited and alarmed by the crimes, which he saw going on every day around him, he had never even hinted an opinion upon any of the great questions which agitated the public mind at the time. But in my walks through the town and the country, I had been so much accustomed, for the last twelve months or more, to hear the name of aristocrat applied to any one who wore a better coat than his neighbor, that I gradually learned to look upon that term as implying the basest, meanest, and most pitiful of all things. My cheek flushed, my brow contracted with an expression of anger which could not be assumed, and I replied, sharply, “No, citizen, no! Neither I, or any one I know, are aristocrats. You insult us by calling us so.” My passion was ridiculous enough; for I had not the slightest idea in the world what the word aristocrat meant. Nevertheless, it had its effect, although that might have been lost for want of witnesses, had not Madame Michaud entered the room at the moment, to see that everything was properly provided for her honored guests. “There, Monsieur Le Commissaire,” she said, “I think you have got your answer. You do not expect to find aristocrats in my house, I suppose.”