Campeau, whose father was also an old soldier,
but of quite another sort. He was a little,
lively, dirty, vivacious Frenchman, living
with a wife to match him, in some Parisian
back settlement, near a peculiarly miserable
barrière. They had a very little room, au
troisième, almost as dirty as a London
lodging of the same class. I was surprised at
this, for Marie had described it to me as a
little bijou of a place, and a fit habitation
for fairies.

But, far more surprising than this, Mons.
Campeau, that little, jumping, ne'er-be-still,
dancing, hopping, Monsieur Campeau, who
looked as if he could not sit quiet for three
minutes together, had actually covered all the
furniture of his drawing-room with worsted
needlework of his own doing. Worsted
flowers stretched over the sofa, and reposed
on the causeuse; worsted cats and dogs sat
upon all the chairs; a tiger peacefully warmed
himself on the hearth-rug; worsted Muses
supported the wooden mantelshelf, which
itself overflowed with worsted flowers; and on
all sides, in stripes down the curtains, and in
borders round the carpet, worsted flowers
bloomed and faded. They were all the work of
Monsieur Campeau's hands. He was very
proud of his achievements too, and would
have none of them covered from the dust;
firstly, because covering would hide them;
and secondly, because it would prevent them
from wearing out, and depriving him of the
fortunate necessity of making more. He told
us that he also hemmed, and knitted—
accomplishments which Madame his wife and
Mademoiselle his daughter sometimes found,
he said, of some slight service to them.

There was another family; that of Blanche
de l'Isle. Please to observe the de, and
print it as big as possible. They were
de, and de is everything. Never imagine
you know what de means until you have
made the acquaintance of some true
Legitimists of the ancien régime. The De l'lsle
family were all this; they were de, they
were therefore noble; they were Henry
Quinquists; they were something very great
indeed: so great that ordinary mortals cannot
form an idea of such greatness; and every
one else was canaille; so that their
acquaintanceship was pure favour, choice, caprice,
owing entirely to their goodness, and not
yours. But they were not at all proud; they
made acquaintance with people who were not
de. They bowed to them; they spoke to
them; they visited them; they sent their
daughters to schools by no means exclusively
de, and would even condescend to accept
situations in the public service for their sons,
under Monsieur Philippe. But they kept a
pretty white silk flag by them, ready to wave
it out of the window, whenever King
Henri Cinq would at length condescend to
make a grand entry into his capital; and
they always used writing paper with a head
of Henri Cinq embossed in one corner. They
lived in a poor way, in a jauntily furnished,
but sadly faded and forlorn-looking little
chamber, on the same side of the river with
the Quartier St.-Germain, and scorned close
acquaintanceship with anything but fallen
greatness like their own. Trade was a word
that congealed them. They had condescended
to Monsieur Philippe; further down
they could never go. Monsieur de l'Isle was
a tall, and sufficiently dignified looking man;
fair, with bold, high features, of which he was
proud, as showing his Norman descent, but
they expressed absolutely nothing save the
perfect self-satisfaction which that fact produced.
It is quite a mistake to set all Frenchmen
down as being lively, quick, agreeable,
or even as being all moderately endowed
with some one of these qualities. Many, very
many, especially amongst the old Legitimists
are heavy, slow, obtuse, impenetrable, and
obstinate to a perfectly maddening degree

Monsieur de l'Isle was one of these. Nothing
but wine made him tolerable, and that must be
English wine (port or sherry); no other wine
was strong enough. When he dined with us
his spirits and his wit always rose in exact
proportion with the gradual emptying of his
second glass of port; when the third was
emptied he was launched into a sea of most
extraordinarily pointless and incomprehensible
anecdotes, which he delivered in the
slowest and most exasperating manner.
In short, he became quite a different
Monsieur de l'Isle from the one who had
gobbled up his soup in silence but an hour
before.

His wife was a clever woman, and must
therefore have suffered inconceivable tortures
during the course of her married life. Whenever
anything occurred that Monsieur de
l'Isle must absolutely, for the good of the
family, know, Madame had to talk to him for
at least three hours to make him understand
what it was all about. She was very pretty,
and not very distinguée, and we were told,
by cut and offended members of the rabble,
that Monsieur de l'Isle had first seen her
behind the counter in a milliner's shop, and,
falling in love with her, had become obstinate
upon the fact and married her. She certainly
knew how to clean lace to perfection, and the
rabble said that she cleaned other lace than
her own, and that it is well known that
in these days one don't do anything ior
nothing. I think the rabble must have been
right about her not having being born a "de,"
for, one day, while I was in her drawing-room,
a very great lady of the true "de"
class came to call upon her, and I observed
that this "de" treated Madame de l'Isle
with bare politeness, and was far more
attentive to Mademoiselle her daughter. This
great lady was Madame la Comtesse de
Valentiernais; a little, old woman, miserably
attired; poverty-stricken and hunger-stricken,
but as full of pride as when
she wore purple and fine linen, and fared