we took to discussing philosophical matters in general; an occupation
well adapted to a situation that required so great an exercise of
discretion.

One day, when we least expected so great a change, our mistress came
in person, searched several chests, trunks and drawers, and finally
discovered us where she had laid us, with her own hands, near four
months before. It seems that, in her hurry and fright, she had actually
forgotten in what nook we had been concealed. We were smoothed
with care, our political order reestablished, and then we were taken
below and restored to the dignity of the select circle in the drawer
already mentioned. This was like removing to a fashionable square, or
living in a beau quartier of a capital. It was even better than removing
from East Broadway into bona fide, real, unequaled, league-long, eighty
feet wide, Broadway!

{beau quartier = swanky neighborhood ; Broadway = in New York
City, of course}

We now had an opportunity of learning some of the great events that
had recently occurred in France, and which still troubled Europe. The
Bourbons were again dethroned, as it was termed, and another
Bourbon seated in their place. It would seem il y a Bourbon et
Bourbon. The result has since shown that "what is bred in the bone will
break out in the flesh." Commerce was at a standstill; our master passed
half his time under arms, as a national guard, in order to keep the
revolutionists from revolutionizing the revolution. The great families had
laid aside their liveries; some of them their coaches; most of them their
arms. Pocket-handkerchiefs of OUR calibre would be thought
decidedly aristocratic; and aristocracy in Paris, just at that moment, was