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“Au revoir, Messieurs,” he answered, and followed the lady.

“General,” said she, as if her heart were overflowing, “you have been spoken against. Please sit down.”

“Is that true, Madame?”

“Yes, General.”

She sank into a luxurious chair.

“A lady said to-day–but you will be angry with me, General.”

“With you, Madame? That is not possible.”

“I do not love to make revelations, General; but when a noble friend is evil spoken of”–she leaned her brow upon her thumb and forefinger, and looked pensively at her slipper’s toe peeping out at the edge of her skirt on the rich carpet–“one’s heart gets very big.”

“Madame, you are an angel! But what said she, Madame?”

“Well, General, I have to tell you the whole truth, if you will not be angry. We were all speaking at once of handsome men. She said to me: ‘Well, Madame Delicieuse, you may say what you will of General Villivicencio, and I suppose it is true; but everybody knows’–pardon me, General, but just so she said–‘all the world knows he treats his son very badly.'”

“It is not true,” said the General.

“If I wasn’t angry!” said Madame, making a pretty fist. ‘How can that be?’ I said. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘mamma says he has been angry with his son for fifteen years.’ ‘But what did his son do?’ I said. ‘Nothing,’ said she. ‘Ma foi,’ I said, ‘me, I too would be angry if my son had done nothing for fifteen years’–ho, ho, ho!”

“It is not true,” said the General.

The old General cleared his throat, and smiled as by compulsion.

“You know, General,” said Madame, looking distressed, “it was nothing to joke about, but I had to say so, because I did not know what your son had done, nor did I wish to hear any thing against one who has the honor to call you his father.”

She paused a moment to let the flattery take effect, and then proceeded:

“But then another lady said to me; she said, ‘For shame, Clarisse, to laugh at good Dr. Mossy; nobody–neither General Villivicencio, neither any other, has a right to be angry against that noble, gentle, kind, brave'”–

“Brave!” said the General, with a touch of irony. “So she said,” answered Madame Delicieuse, “and I asked her, ‘how brave?’ ‘Brave?’ she said, ‘why, braver than any soldier, in tending the small-pox, the cholera, the fevers, and all those horrible things. Me, I saw his father once run from a snake; I think he wouldn’t fight the small-pox–my faith!’ she said, ‘they say that Dr. Mossy does all that and never wears a scapula!–and does it nine hundred and ninety-nine times in a thousand for nothing! Is that brave, Madame Delicieuse, or is it not?’–And, General,–what could I say?”

Madame dropped her palms on either side of her spreading robes and waited pleadingly for an answer. There was no sound but the drumming of the General’s fingers on his sword-hilt. Madame resumed:

“I said, ‘I do not deny that Mossy is a noble gentleman;’–I had to say that, had I not, General?”

“Certainly, Madame,” said the General, “my son is a gentleman, yes.”

“‘But,’ I said, ‘he should not make Monsieur, his father, angry.'”

“True,” said the General, eagerly.

“But that lady said: ‘Monsieur, his father, makes himself angry,’ she said. ‘Do you know, Madame, why his father is angry so long?’ Another lady says, ‘I know!’ ‘For what?’ said I. ‘Because he refused to become a soldier; mamma told me that.’ ‘It cannot be!’ I said.”

The General flushed. Madame saw it, but relentlessly continued:

“‘Mais oui,’ said that lady. ‘What!’ I said, ‘think you General Villivicencio will not rather be the very man most certain to respect a son who has the courage to be his own master? Oh, what does he want with a poor fool of a son who will do only as he says? You think he will love him less for healing instead of killing? Mesdemoiselles, you do not know that noble soldier!'”