Later, at an appetizing breakfast--at which, to Dick's great satisfaction, the good man had permitted and congratulated himself to sit at table with a free-born American--he was even more loquacious. For what then, he would ask, was this incompetence, this imbecility, of France? He would tell. It was the vile corruption of Paris, the grasping of capital and companies, the fatal influence of the still clinging noblesse, and the insidious Jesuitical power of the priests. As for example, Monsieur “the Booflo-bil” had doubtless noticed the great gates of the park before the cafe? It was the preserve,--the hunting-park of one of the old grand seigneurs, still kept up by his descendants, the Comtes de Fontonelles--hundreds of acres that had never been tilled, and kept as wild waste wilderness,--kept for a day's pleasure in a year! And, look you! the peasants starving around its walls in their small garden patches and pinched farms! And the present Comte de Fontonelles cascading gold on his mistresses in Paris; and the Comtesse, his mother, and her daughter living there to feed and fatten and pension a brood of plotting, black-cowled priests. Ah, bah! where was your Republican France, then? But a time would come. The “Booflo-bil” had, without doubt, noticed, as he came along the road, the breaches in the wall of the park? Dick, with a slight dry reserve, “reckoned that he had.” “They were made by the scythes and pitchforks of the peasants in the Revolution of '93, when the count was emigre, as one says with reason 'skedadelle,' to England. Let them look the next time that they burn not the chateau,--'bet your lif'!'” “The chateau,” said Dick, with affected carelessness. “Wot's the blamed thing like?” It was an old affair,--with armor and a picture-gallery,--and bricabrac. He had never seen it. Not even as a boy,--it was kept very secluded then. As a man--you understand--he could not ask the favor. The Comtes de Fontonelles and himself were not friends. The family did not like a cafe near their sacred gates,--where had stood only the huts of their retainers. The American would observe that he had not called it “Cafe de Chateau,” nor “Cafe de Fontonelles,”--the gold of California would not induce him. Why did he remain there? Naturally, to goad them! It was a principle, one understood. To GOAD them and hold them in check! One kept a cafe,--why not? One had one's principles,--one's conviction,--that was another thing! That was the kind of “'air-pin”--was it not?--that HE, Gustav Ribaud, was like!