I should say, with the good Henri Quatre; and when talking of money
matters reckoned not in francs, like the common, godless herd of
post-Revolutionary Frenchmen, but in obsolete and forgotten ecus--ecus
of all money units in the world!--as though Louis Quatorze were still
promenading in royal splendour the gardens of Versailles, and Monsieur
de Colbert busy with the direction of maritime affairs. You must admit
that in a banker of the nineteenth century it was a quaint idiosyncrasy.
Luckily in the counting-house (it occupied part of the ground floor of
the Delestang town residence, in a silent, shady street) the accounts
were kept in modern money, so that I never had any difficulty in
making my wants known to the grave, low-voiced, decorous, Legitimist
(I suppose) clerks, sitting in the perpetual gloom of heavily barred
windows behind the sombre, ancient counters, beneath lofty ceilings with
heavily moulded cornices. I always felt on going out as though I had
been in the temple of some very dignified but completely temporal
religion. And it was generally on these occasions that under the great
carriage gateway Lady Ded-- I mean Madame Delestang, catching sight of
my raised hat, would beckon me with an amiable imperiousness to the side
of the carriage, and suggest with an air of amused nonchalance, "Venez
donc faire un tour avec nous," to which the husband would add an
encouraging "C'est ca. Allons, montez, jeune homme." He questioned me
sometimes, significantly but with perfect tact and delicacy, as to the
way I employed my time, and never failed to express the hope that I
wrote regularly to my "honoured uncle." I made no secret of the way I
employed my time, and I rather fancy that my artless tales of the pilots
and so on entertained Madame Delestang, so far as that ineffable woman
could be entertained by the prattle of a youngster very full of his new
experience amongst strange men and strange sensations. She expressed no
opinions, and talked to me very little; yet her portrait hangs in the
gallery of my intimate memories, fixed there by a short and fleeting