"_Est-ce que je me suis trompée, ma chere_?" demanded the lively Frenchwoman. "Is not this _la célébration de votre indépendance_?" "You are not mistaken, my dear Mademoiselle Viefville, and great preparations are made to do it honour. I understand there is to be a military parade, an oration, a dinner, and fire-works." "_Monsieur votre père----?_" "_Monsieur mon père_ is not much given to rejoicings, and he takes this annual joy, much as a valetudinarian takes his morning draught." "_Et Monsieur Jean Effingham----?_" "Is always a philosopher; you are to expect no antics from him." "_Mais ces jeunes gens, Monsieur Bragg, Monsieur Dodge, et Monsieur Powis, même!_" "_Se réjouissent en Américains._ I presume you are aware that Mr. Powis has declared himself to be an American?" Mademoiselle Viefville looked towards the streets, along which divers tall, sombre-looking countrymen, with faces more lugubrious than those of the mutes of a funeral, were sauntering, with a desperate air of enjoyment; and she shrugged her shoulders, as she muttered to herself, "_que ces Americains sont drôles!_" At a later hour, however, Eve surprised her father, and indeed most of the Americans of the party, by proposing that the ladies should walk out into the street, and witness the fête. "My child, this is a strange proposition to come from a young lady of twenty," said her father. "Why strange, dear sir?--We always mingled in the village fêtes in Europe." "_Certainement_" cried the delighted Mademoiselle Viefville; "_c'est de rigueur, même_" "And it is _de rigueur_, here, Mademoiselle, for young ladies to keep out of them," put in John Effingham. "I should be very sorry to see either of you three ladies in the streets of Templeton to-day." Why so, cousin Jack? Have we any thing to fear from the rudeness of our countrymen? I have always understood, on the contrary, that in no other part of the world is woman so uniformly treated with respect and kindness, as in this very republic of ours; and yet, by all these ominous faces, I perceive that it will not do for her to trust herself in the streets of a village on a _festa_" "You are not altogether wrong, in what you now say, Miss Effingham, nor are you wholly right. Woman, as a whole, is well treated in America; and yet it will not do for a _lady_ to mingle in scenes like these, as ladies may and do mingle with them in Europe." "I have heard this difference accounted for," said Paul Powis, "by the fact that women have no legal rank in this country. In those nations where the station of a lady is protected by legal ordinances, it is said she may descend with impunity; but, in this, where all are equal before the law, so many misunderstand the real merits of their position, that she is obliged to keep aloof from any collisions with those who might be disposed to mistake their own claims."