At the head of his table, peeling oranges and slicing pineapples for the ladies in his vicinity, sat the Bourgeois himself, laughing, jesting, and telling anecdotes with a geniality that was contagious. “'The gods are merry sometimes,' says Homer, 'and their laughter shakes Olympus!'” was the classical remark of Father de Berey, at the other end of the table. Jupiter did not laugh with less loss of dignity than the Bourgeois. Few of the guests did not remember to the end of their lives the majestic and happy countenance of the Bourgeois on this memorable day. At his right hand sat Amélie de Repentigny and the Count de la Galissonière. The Governor, charmed with the beauty and agreeableness of the young chatelaine, had led her in to dinner, and devoted himself to her and the Lady de Tilly with the perfection of gallantry of a gentleman of the politest court in Europe. On his left sat the radiant, dark-eyed Hortense de Beauharnais. With a gay assumption of independence Hortense had taken the arm of La Corne St. Luc, and declared she would eat no dinner unless he would be her cavalier and sit beside her! The gallant old soldier surrendered at discretion. He laughingly consented to be her captive, he said, for he had no power and no desire but to obey. Hortense was proud of her conquest. She seated herself by his side with an air of triumph and mock gravity, tapping him with her fan whenever she detected his eye roving round the table, compassionating, she affirmed, her rivals, who had failed where she had won in securing the youngest, the handsomest, and most gallant of all the gentlemen at Belmont. “Not so fast, Hortense!” exclaimed the gay Chevalier; “you have captured me by mistake! The tall Swede--he is your man! The other ladies all know that, and are anxious to get me out of your toils, so that you may be free to ensnare the philosopher!” “But you don't wish to get away from me! I am your garland, Chevalier, and you shall wear me to-day. As for the tall Swede, he has no idea of a fair flower of our sex except to wear it in his button-hole,--this way!” added she, pulling a rose out of a vase and archly adorning the Chevalier's vest with it. “All pretence and jealousy, mademoiselle. The tall Swede knows how to take down your pride and bring you to a proper sense of your false conceit of the beauty and wit of the ladies of New France.” Hortense gave two or three tosses of defiance to express her emphatic dissent from his opinions. “I wish Herr Kalm would lend me his philosophic scales, to weigh your sex like lambs in market,” continued La Corne St. Luc; “but I fear I am too old, Hortense, to measure women except by the fathom, which is the measure of a man.”