The things we do!

They saw each other once a day: Madame Paul always paid her
visit to the Comte de Florac: and Betsy, her maid, made the old gentleman
laugh by her briskness and talk. She brought back to her mistress the
most wonderful stories which the old man told her about his doings during
the emigration--before he married Madame la Comtesse--when he gave
lessons in dancing, parbleu! There was his fiddle still, a trophy of
those old times. He chirped, and coughed, and sang, in his cracked old
voice, as he talked about them. "Lor! bless you, mum," says Betsy, "he
must have been a terrible old man!" He remembered the times well enough,
but the stories he sometimes told over twice or thrice in an hour. I am
afraid he had not repented sufficiently of those wicked old times: else
why did he laugh and giggle so when he recalled them? He would laugh and
giggle till he was choked with his old cough: and old S. Jean, his man,
came and beat M. le Comte on the back, and made M. le Comte take a
spoonful of his syrup.


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