He proved a vivacious fellow, full of amusing anecdote,--a bottle of
rich wine drawn from his own private stock so stimulating his
imagination that I had little to do but sit and listen. Yet he
contrived to learn from me,--how, I hardly know,--the simple story of
my life, and, indeed, assumed a certain air of patronizing superiority,
boasting unduly of his wider experience and achievements in a way that
somewhat nettled me at last, as I began to comprehend that he was
merely showing off his genteel graces the better to exhibit his
contempt for my provincial narrowness. I did not permit this really to
anger me, for our views upon such matters were totally different, and I
could not help feel admiration for the brilliant and audacious fellow.

The black waited upon us while we ate and drank, moving noiselessly
across the rough floor, so keenly observant of his master's slightest
wish as to convince me the latter possessed a temper which upon
occasion burst its bounds. Yet now he was surely in the best of
humors; and with the coming of our second bottle, after the remains of
the repast had been removed, he sang several love-songs in his native
tongue, the meaning of which I could only guess at.

"Saint Guise!" he exclaimed at last, flinging one booted foot over the
table corner. "You are a very sphinx of a fellow. You deny being
English, yet you have all the silence of that nation. I am hungry,
Monsieur, for the sweet sound of the French tongue."

"'T is a language of which I know little," I answered, striving to
speak pleasantly, although his manner was becoming less and less to my
liking. "I have met with your _coureurs de bois_ in plenty, and picked
up sufficient of their common phrases to enable me to converse on
ordinary themes with them; yet I confess I find it difficult to follow