young citizen, "I see. If these rococo citizens play that game with me,
I shall have to take them down." Thus a fresh peril menaced this family,
on whose hearts and fortunes such heavy blows had fallen.

One evening our young official, after a day spent in the service of
the country, deigned to take a little stroll to relieve the cares of
administration. He imprinted on his beardless face the expression of
a wearied statesman, and strolled through an admiring village. The men
pretended veneration from policy; the women, whose views of this great
man were shallower but more sincere, smiled approval of his airs; and
the young puppy affected to take no notice of either sex.

Outside the village, Publicola suddenly encountered two young ladies,
who resembled nothing he had hitherto met with in his district; they
were dressed in black, and with extreme simplicity; but their easy grace
and composure, and the refined sentiment of their gentle faces, told at
a glance they belonged to the high nobility. Publicola divined them at
once, and involuntarily raised his hat to so much beauty and dignity,
instead of poking it with a finger as usual. On this the ladies
instantly courtesied to him after the manner of their party, with a
sweep and a majesty, and a precision of politeness, that the pup would
have laughed at if he had heard of it; but seeing it done, and well
done, and by lovely women of rank, he was taken aback by it, and lifted
his hat again, and bowed again after he had gone by, and was generally
flustered. In short, instead of a member of the Consular Government
saluting private individuals of a decayed party that existed only
by sufferance, a handsome, vain, good-natured boy had met two
self-possessed young ladies of distinction and breeding, and had cut the
usual figure.