the example as he spoke, in a mock-heroic manner, quite as absurd and
irrelevant as Favraud's own.

Lost in deep thought, and gently tapping her snuffbox as she mused--the
tripod of her inspiration, as it seemed--Madame Grambeau sat silently,
with what memories of the past and what insight into the future none can
know save those like herself grown hoary with wisdom and experience.

At last she spoke, addressing her remarks to me, as though the careless
words I had hazarded had just been spoken, and the attention of her
hearers undiverted by divers absurdities--among others the affected
gambols of Duganne--anxious to place himself in an agreeable aspect
before both of his _inamoratas_, past and present.

"I do not agree with you, mademoiselle. I am one of those who think
that in the very framing of this Constitution of ours the dragon's teeth
were sown, whose harvest is not yet produced. Mr. Calhoun, with his
prophetic eye, foresees that this crop of armed men is inevitable from
such germs, as does Mr. Clay, were he only frank, which he is not,
because he deludes himself--the most incurable and inexcusable of all
deceptions."

And she applied herself again assiduously to her snuffbox, tapping it
peremptorily before opening it, and, with a gloomy eye fixed on space,
she continued:

"In all lands, from the time of Cassandra and Jeremiah up, there have
been prophets. Prophets for good and prophets for ill--of which some few
have been God-appointed, and the sayings of such alone have been
preserved. The rest vanish away into oblivion like chaff before the