As I glanced on the little, superbly dressed Jewess, sitting between her
father and myself, I thought of the possibilities to come.

----"In such a night
Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew,
And, with an unthrift love, did run from Venice."

We soon after had the moon herself, rising broad and bright from the
ocean; and all was romance, until a party were seen coming up the
avenue, laughing and talking very sportively.

"I beg a thousand apologies; but I had forgotten to mention that we have
a small dance this evening, chiefly foreign, and, as you may perceive,
they keep early hours," said Jessica, rising to receive them.

"They are French, and emigrants," added Mordecai. "All is over with them
and theirs in France, and they have made the best of their way to
England, therein acting more wisely than those who have stayed behind. I
know France well; the '_tigre-singe_,' as their countryman described
them. These unfortunates have been consigned to me by my correspondents,
like so many bales of silks, or barrels of Medoc. But here they come."

I certainly was not prepared for the names which I now heard
successively announced. Instead of the moderate condition from which I
had supposed Mordecai and his pretty daughter, aspiring as she was, to
have chosen their society, I found myself in a circle of names of which
the world had been talking since I was in my cradle, if not for a dozen
centuries before. I was in the midst of dukes, counts, and chevaliers,
maréchals and marchionesses, the patrons and patronesses of the