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"'Potz tausend donner-wetter! said the Emperor, good-humouredly turning round; 'what is that the Chevalier Mandeville is saying? Why, chevalier, you look as fierce as a roused lion. We must take care of you old English fire-eaters. By the way, added he very kindly, 'our Chancellor will send you to-morrow the decoration of the first class of the Golden Bugle. No thanks. You deserve it.
On the other hand, there were Republicans in that Body who sturdily met the bluster of the Southern Fire-eaters with frank and courageous words expressing their full convictions on the situation and their belief that Concessions could not be made and that Compromises were mere waste paper.
They were a haughty, individualistic, bold, forceful, sometimes charming band of fire-eaters. In their opinion they had been deeply insulted. They wanted reprisal and punishment. When therefore the Committee set a definite day for disbanding, the local authorities and upholders of law were distinctly disappointed.
Whatever the reason may have been, incapacity, obliquity of moral and political vision, or absolute championship of the cause of disruption, certain it is that the southern fire-eaters could not have found a tool more perfectly suited to their purpose than James Buchanan. He was the center of one of the most astonishing political cabals of all history.
For the oxygen, upon which the lungs chiefly feed, is the fiery principle in Nature, all that we denominate fire and flame being but the manifestation of its action. We are severe upon fire-eaters, Southern and other; yet here are we, cool Northerns, quaffing this very principle and essence of fire in large lung-draughts every moment, each of us carrying a perpetual furnace in his bosom.
These men are generally styled "human salamanders," and must not be confounded with the "fire-eaters," who, as a rule, are simply jugglers. Martinez, the so-called "French Salamander," was born in Havana. As a baker he had exposed himself from boyhood to very high temperatures, and he subsequently gave public exhibitions of his extraordinary ability to endure heat.
Thus, Senator Ben Wade of Ohio, among the bravest and manliest of them all, in a speech in the Senate, December 17, the very day on which the South Carolina Secession Convention was to assemble, said to the Fire-eaters: "I tell you frankly that we did lay down the principle in our platform, that we would prohibit, if we had the power, Slavery from invading another inch of the Free Soil of this Government.
But I suppose that you, being an Englishman, will not believe that until conviction is forced on you by experience. Come, I will introduce you to one of those colonists who are supposed to be such discontented fire-eaters; I think he will receive you hospitably."
They were veterans of the Seven Years' War, and mostly colonels. Their fidelity was thankfully acknowledged, but their services were not gratefully accepted. The aged and ferocious fire-eaters were sent back to their arrowroot and easy-chairs.
She seemed not to be able to speak, and, by way of relieving herself of her overcharge of wrath, smote me several times on either ear with that pudgy hand I had so often pressed in mine or tenderly kissed. At this exhibition of a resentment I can hardly deem feminine, the Fire-Eaters roared with laughter and cheered her to continue.
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