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A few bottles of "wild-berry wine," as Elizabeth Barrett called such fluids, were added to the dinner toward its close, and Marion begged permission to have her basket of cakes and fruits brought in for dessert, which else had been wanting to our repast; to which request Madame Grambeau graciously acceded.
Danton! have you nothing to say to this strange lady?" said Madame Grambeau, addressing her bird by name; "you must not neglect my friends, Danton Pardi!" "Bird of freedom, moulting moulting!" was the whimsical rejoinder. "Jackson! give us your paw, Old Hick Hick Hickory!"
"Yes, hear him, and be edified," was the sarcastic response of Favraud to Duganne, who took no other notice, even if he understood the point, than to lead the way to the portico, where swung the cage of the jolly bird in question; and, headed by Madame Grambeau leaning on her cane, we followed simultaneously, with the exception of Major Favraud, who continued at the table with his cigar and cognac-flask, in sullen and solitary state.
"'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: "Clay is, unconsciously, I trust, for the honor of mankind, fulfilling his destiny this great prophet who still refuses to prophesy.
All this and much more I had heard before I saw Madame Grambeau or her abode a picturesque affair in itself, however humble consisting originally of a log-house, to which more recently white frame wings had been attached, projecting a few feet in front of the primitive building, and connected thereto by a shed-roofed gallery, which embraced the whole front of the log-cottage, along which ran puncheon-steps the entire length of the grand original tree-trunk, as of the porch itself.
Her husband had been carried to a Southern port, she learned by the merest chance, and, disguising herself in man's attire, and leading her little son by the hand, she set forth in quest of him, carrying with her a violin, which, together with the clothes she wore, had been found in the trunk of Monsieur Grambeau, brought on the vessel in which she came, but which depository she had been obliged to abandon, when setting forth on her pilgrimage.
Here was a ferry with its Charon-like boat, of the primitive sort flat barge, poled over by negroes, and capable of containing at one time many bales of cotton, a stagecoach or wagon with four horses, besides passengers ad libitum. This ferry constituted the chief source of revenue of Madame Grambeau, an old French lady, remarkable in many ways.
But Madame Grambeau seemed not to have noticed this ridiculous proceeding, which, of course, created momentary mirth at the expense of the penitent Favraud, to whom Dr. Durand repeated the tantalizing saying, that "it is a royal privilege to take snuff gracefully" giving the example as he spoke, in a mock-heroic manner, quite as absurd and irrelevant as Favraud's own.
On suggesting this to Madame Grambeau, she too saw the resemblance I spoke of, and she agreed, with me, that the coincidence of genius furnished many such parallels, where no charge of plagiarism could be attached to either side.
I questioned low of Marion. "Both in one, it seems to me," was the reply. "But Madame Grambeau is no curiosity, no novelty to me, I have stopped here so frequently. I ought to have told you, before we came, not to be surprised."
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