"Yes, indeed," cried Mme. de St. Cyr, extending her hand for it. "But none the less her taste. Is it not a fairy thing? A _Cellini!_ Observe this curve, these lines! but one man could have drawn them!"--and she held it for our scrutiny. It was a tiny hand and arm of ivory, parting the foam of a wave and holding a golden shell, in which the salt seemed to have crusted itself as if in some secretest ocean-hollow. I looked at the Baron a moment; his eyes were fastened upon the _salière_, and all the color had forsaken his cheeks,--his face counted his years. The diamond was in that little shell. But how to obtain it? I had no novice to deal with; nothing but delicate _finesse_ would answer. "Permit me to examine it," I said. She passed it to her left hand for me to take. The butler made a step forward. "Meanwhile, Madame," said the Baron, smiling, "I have no salt." The instinct of hospitality prevailed;--she was about to return it. Might I do an awkward thing? Unhesitatingly. Reversing my glass, I gave my arm a wider sweep than necessary, and, as it met her hand with violence, the _salière_ fell. Before it touched the floor I caught it There was still a pinch of salt left,--nothing more. "A thousand pardons!" I said, and restored it to the Baron. His Excellency beheld it with dismay; it was rare to see him bend over and scrutinize it with starting eyes. "Do you find there what Count Arnaklos begs in the song," asked Delphine,--"the secret of the sea, Monsieur?" He handed it to the butler, observing, "I find here no"---- "Salt, Monsieur?" replied the man, who did not doubt but all had gone right, and replenished it. Had one told me in the morning that no intricate manoeuvres, but a simple blunder, would effect this, I might have met him in the Bois de Boulogne. "We will not quarrel," said my neighbor, lightly, with reference to the popular superstition. "Rather propitiate the offended deities by a crumb tossed over the shoulder," added I. "Over the left?" asked the Baron, to intimate his knowledge of another idiom, together with a reproof for my _gaucherie_. "_À gauche,--quelquefois c'est justement à droit_," I replied. "Salt in any pottage," said Madame, a little uneasily, "is like surprise in an individual; it brings out the flavor of every ingredient, so my cook tells me." "It is a preventive of palsy," I remarked, as the slight trembling of my adversary's finger caught my eye. "And I have noticed that a taste for it is peculiar to those who trace their blood to Galitzin," continued Madame. "Let us, therefore, elect a deputation to those mines near Cracow," said Delphine. "To our cousins, the slaves there?" laughed her mother. "I must vote to lay your bill on the table, Mademoiselle," I rejoined. "But with a _boule blanche_, Monsieur?" "As the salt has been laid on the floor," said the Baron.