des Zéphirs,' because it was given on a spot which had been a churchyard--I forget the name of the church. And just above the skull and cross-bones upon the gateway, they had put up a transparency with the inscription: 'Le bal des Zéphirs;' and they had danced like mad upon the graves and tombstones, till morning. "All this time, my dear young count sat grave and silent, opposite his father, whose discourse, I could plainly see, appeared as blasphemous to him, as it did to me; but he spoke very calmly, and beautiful were the things he said:--'Man has progressed since then,' he said; 'it requires more energy to build up than to destroy.' In his opinion: 'a world without a sense of veneration must necessarily decay and fall in pieces, like a building without cement;' and more of the like which I have forgotten, more's the pity; but when he spoke, I used rather to watch his eyes, than mind his lips! His eyes would grow so clear, you could look right through them. Only one thing more I recollect; he said: 'A generation that can dance on the graves of its fathers, will assuredly care little for its children; a man who tramples upon the past, is unworthy of a future--' "As these words escaped him, he turned red and stopped short,--fearful lest his father should be offended by them. But, bless you, he was not used to mind such trifles! "'Bah!' says he: 'we are all the same--only we are quieter; we do the same things, only not to the sound of fifes and trumpets--we have no piping to our dancing. In every generation man is selfish, and has a right to be. There was another kind of ball in those days, they called it le bal des victimes. When the Convention had confiscated the property of the guillotined, it was returned to their heirs, after the 9th Thermidor. Thus many of them held their lands, par la grace de Robespierre. Young men began to live fast again, and to enjoy themselves. They gave balls where only those were admitted who could prove that some very near relation had been beheaded; it was a sort of herald's office to the scaffold; and to shew their gratitude for their inheritance, they invented a peculiar mode of salutation. A gentleman would go up to a lady, and jerk his head forwards, as if he dropped it, and the lady would do the same. They called it Salut à la victime; and all this with fiddling and dancing, and wax-lights and champagne. I do not admire that style of thing myself; it was a fashion like any other, and not a pretty one, I think; but I really do see no improvement in young people's babbling of the sanctity of family ties, and of their duty to their fathers, and forefathers, and sighing in secret for their turn to come, even if without the connivance of a Robespierre.'"