I held my breath in dismay! The more I strove to change the subject the
more our fat wag, fancying he was teasing me to the delight of the others,
harped on the one string, until with pure apprehension of what Fontenette
might presently do or say, my blood ran hot and cold. But Monsieur showed
neither amusement nor annoyance, only a perfectly gracious endurance. Yet
how could I know what instant his forbearance might give way, or what
serpent's eggs the joker's inanities might in the next day or hour turn
out to be, laid in the hot heart of the Creole gentleman? Then it was that
this slender little German seamstress-wife shone forth like the first star
of the breathless twilight.

Seamstress? no; she had left the seamstress totally behind her. You might
have thought the finest tactics of the drawing-room--not of to-day, but of
the times when gentlemen wore swords and dirks--had been at her finger-ends
all her life. She took our good neighbor's giddy pleasantries as deep
truths lightly put, and answered them in such graceful, mild earnest, and
with such a modest, yet fetching, quaintness, that we were all preached to
more effectively than we could have been by seven priests from one pulpit.
Or, at any rate, that was my feeling; every note she uttered was
melodiously kind, but every sentence was an arrow sent home.

"You make me," she said, "you make me sink of se aunt of my musser, vhat
she said to my musser vhen my musser iss getting married. 'Senda,' she
said, 'vonce in a vhile'--is sat right, 'vonce in a vhile?'--so?--'vonce
in a vhile your Rudolph going to see a voman he better had married san
you. Sen he going to fall a little vay--maybe a good vay--in love viss
her; and sen if Rudolph iss a scoundtrel, or if you iss a fool, sare be
trouble. But if Rudolph don't be a scoundtrel and you don't be a fool he
vill pretty soon straight' up himself and say, One man can't ever'sing
have, and mine Senda she is enough!'... Sat vas my Aunt Senda."