of plate and pine-apples it was--when our entertainer was called out of
the room by a new arrival. After some delay, he returned, bringing in
with him a middle-aged officer, a fine soldierly-looking figure, in the
uniform of the royal guard. He had just arrived from France with letters
for some of the party, and with an introduction to the Jew, whom I now
began to regard as an agent of the French princes. The officer was known
to the whole table; and the enquiries for the fate of their friends and
France were incessant and innumerable. He evidently suppressed much, to
avoid "a scene;" yet what he had to tell was sufficiently alarming. The
ominous shake of the Jew's head, and the changes of his sagacious
visage, showed me that he at least thought the evil day on the point of
completion.

"Living," said he, "at this distance from the place of events which
succeed each other with such strange rapidity, we can scarcely judge of
any thing. But, if the king would rely more on his peasantry and less on
his populace, and more on his army than either, he might be king of
France still."

"True!--true!" was the general acclamation.

"He should have clung to his noblesse, like Henri Quatre," said a duke.

"He should have made common cause with his clergy," said a prelate, with
the physiognomy of one of Titian's cardinals.

"Any thing but the Tiers Etat," was uttered by all, with a general voice
of horror.

"My letters of this evening," said Mordecai, "tell me that the _fête_ at