"Here are croquets too, as I live," said Duganne, lifting a cover before him and peeping in, then returning it quietly to its place. "Are you a fairy, madame?" "Much more like a witch," she said, with gayety. "You young men, at least, think every old, toothless gray-haired crone like me ready for the stake, you know." "Not when they make such steaks," said Dr. Durand, attacking the dish, with its savory surroundings, before him. "Ah! you make calembourgs, my good doctor.--What do you call them, Favraud? It is one of the few English words I do not know--or forget. I believe, to make them, however, is a medical peculiarity." "Puns, madame, puns, not pills. Don't forget it now. It is time you were beginning to master our language. You know you are almost grown up!" and Favraud looked at her saucily. "A language which madame speaks more perfectly than any foreigner I have ever known," I remarked. She bowed in answer, well pleased. In truth, the accent of Madame Grambeau was barely detectable, and her phraseology was that of a well-translated book--correct, but not idiomatic, and bearing about it the idiosyncrasy of the language from which it was derived. She was evidently a person of culture and native power of intellect combined, and her finely-moulded face, as well as every gesture and tone, indicated superiority and character. In that lonely wild, and beneath that lowly roof, there abode a spirit able and worthy to lead the _coteries_ of the great, and to preside over the councils of statesmen, and (to rise in climax) the drawing-room of the _grande monde_. But it was her whim rather than her necessity to tarry where she could alone be strictly independent, a _sine qua non_ of her being. The son she had led by the hand from Hew York to Georgia, and who, standing by her side, distinctly remembered to have seen the head of the Princess Lamballe borne on a pole through the streets of Paris, was now a prominent member of the Legislature, and, through his rich wife, the incumbent of a great plantation. But the teachings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that philosophic sign-post, still influenced his mother, in her refusal to live under his splendid roof, and partake of his bounty, however liberally offered. "I have a home of my own," she said, "a few faithful servants, brains, and energy still, besides a small account with General Curzon, in his bank at Savannah, wherewith to meet emergencies; while these things last, I will owe to no man or woman for bread or shelter. And, when these depart, may the grave cover my bones, and the good God receive my soul!" Books alone she accepted as gifts from her son, and of these, in a little three-cornered library, she had a goodly store in the two languages which she read with equal facility, if not delight.