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"Clancarty has doubtless often sought me vainly for the trivial coin: some butterflies in the coulisse of the playhouse will have missed my pouncet-box; but I swear there are few in Paris who would be inconsolable if Victor de Montaiglon never set foot on the trottoir again.
"And oh!" she exclaimed with a sort of ecstasy. "My pouncet-box! how sweet! delicieux!" She presented the gold filigree at the noses successively of Hamish and Fifine and the cat, all of whom sniffed in polite ecstasy, but Kitty suddenly wiped her nose with her paw several times and then began to wash her face.
"But come, my Lord de Vaux," he continued, "wend we to the tent of this sick squire, where we shall learn whether this Hakim hath really the art of curing which he professeth, ere we consider whether there be safety in permitting him to exercise his art upon King Richard. Yet, hold! let me first take my pouncet-box, for these fevers spread like an infection.
On one side he had caused his name to be engraved in small script. Now, as Laura admired it, he held it towards her. "An old pouncet-box, I believe," he informed her, "or possibly it held an ointment for her finger nails." He spilled the matches into his hand. "You see the red stain still on the inside; and smell," he added, as she took it from him.
His Lordship thought he saw the trend of his Grace's mind, and felt better. "I'm rich to be sure, egad! What's the game, faro, loo, crib, langquement or quinze?" and he tapped his pouncet-box nervously. "We have always been good, true friends, my lord.
'And me a pouncet-box? added Annora. 'And me a French puppet dressed Paris fashion? said Dolly. 'And what shall he bring Lucy? added Bess. 'I know, said Annora; 'the pearls that mother is always talking about! I heard her say that Lucy should wear them on her wedding-day. 'Hush! interposed Lucy, 'don't you see my father yonder on the step, beckoning to you?
Thus speaking, Sir Piercie Shafton knelt down, and most gracefully presented to the nostrils of Mary Avenel a silver pouncet-box, exquisitely chased, containing a sponge dipt in the essence which he recommmended so highly.
Then came the lady-in-waiting, Madame de Sauve, the wife of the state secretary in attendance on Charles, and a triumphant, coquettish beauty, than a fat, good-humoured Austrian dame, always called Madame la Comtesse, because her German name was unpronounceable, and without whom the Queen never stirred, and lastly a little figure, rounded yet slight, slender yet soft and plump, with a kitten-like alertness and grace of motion, as she sprang out, collected the Queen's properties of fan, kerchief, pouncet-box, mantle, &c., and disappeared in to the chateau, without Berenger's being sure of anything but that her little black hat had a rose-coloured feather in it.
If it be a mind interested in "pouncet-box" covers, in the pictorial setting forth of themes whose illustration most intimately appeals to the less cultivated and more rudimentary appreciation of fine art as indisputably the Madonnas and Charities and Oresteses and Bacchus Triumphs of M. Bouguereau do one may very well dispense himself from the duty of admiring its productions.
Some were politicians, ministers at home, or envoys abroad; some were female leaders of fashion, planning balls and masquerades, summoning him to join an expedition to Ranelagh or Vauxhall; others were scholars, poets, or critics, inviting comments on Gray's poems, on Robertson's style, on Gibbon's boundless learning; or on the impostures of Macpherson and Chatterton; others, again, were antiquarians, to whom the helmet of Francis, or a pouncet-box of the fair Diana, were objects of far greater interest than the intrigues of a Secretary of State, or the expedients of a Chancellor of the Exchequer; and all such subjects are discussed by him with evidently equal willingness, equal clearness, and liveliness.
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