At last she spoke, addressing her remarks to me, as though the careless words I had hazarded had just been spoken, and the attention of her hearers undiverted by divers absurdities--among others the affected gambols of Duganne--anxious to place himself in an agreeable aspect before both of his _inamoratas_, past and present. "I do not agree with you, mademoiselle. I am one of those who think that in the very framing of this Constitution of ours the dragon's teeth were sown, whose harvest is not yet produced. Mr. Calhoun, with his prophetic eye, foresees that this crop of armed men is inevitable from such germs, as does Mr. Clay, were he only frank, which he is not, because he deludes himself--the most incurable and inexcusable of all deceptions." And she applied herself again assiduously to her snuffbox, tapping it peremptorily before opening it, and, with a gloomy eye fixed on space, she continued: "In all lands, from the time of Cassandra and Jeremiah up, there have been prophets. Prophets for good and prophets for ill--of which some few have been God-appointed, and the sayings of such alone have been preserved. The rest vanish away into oblivion like chaff before the wind--never mind what their achievement, what their boast. "In this nation we have only two true prophets, Calhoun and Clay--both men of equal might, and resolution, and intellect--gifted as beseems their vocation, masterful and heroic; and to these all other men are subordinate in the great designs of Providence." "Where do you leave Mr. Webster, John Quincy Adams, General Jackson himself, in such a category, madame?" I asked, eagerly. "They are doing, or have done, the work God has appointed for them to do, I suppose, mademoiselle; but they are accessories merely of the times, and will pass away with the necessities of the moment." "'The earth has bubbles as the water hath, and these are of them,'" said Major Favraud aside, between his short, set teeth, nodding to me as he spoke, and lending the next moment implicit attention to what Madame Grambeau was saying; for the brief pause she had made for another pinch of snuff was ended, and she continued impetuously, as if no interval had occurred: