CHAPTER XXV.
AURORA AS A HISTORIAN Alas! the phonograph was invented three-quarters of a century too late.
If type could entrap one-half the pretty oddities of Aurora's speech,--the arch, the pathetic, the grave, the earnest, the matter-of-fact, the ecstatic tones of her voice,--nay, could it but reproduce the movement of her hands, the eloquence of her eyes, or the shapings of her mouth,--ah! but type--even the phonograph--is such an inadequate thing! Sometimes she laughed; sometimes Clotilde, unexpectedly to herself, joined her; and twice or thrice she provoked a similar demonstration from the ox-like apothecary,--to her own intense amusement.

Sometimes she shook her head in solemn scorn; and, when Frowenfeld, at a certain point where Palmyre's fate locked hands for a time with that of Bras-Coupe, asked a fervid question concerning that strange personage, tears leaped into her eyes, as she said: "Ah! 'Sieur Frowenfel', iv I tra to tell de sto'y of Bras-Coupe, I goin' to cry lag a lill bebby." The account of the childhood days upon the plantation at Cannes Brulees may be passed by.

It was early in Palmyre's fifteenth year that that Kentuckian, 'mutual friend' of her master and Agricola, prevailed with M.de Grapion to send her to the paternal Grandissime mansion,--a complimentary gift, through Agricola, to Mademoiselle, his niece,--returnable ten years after date.
The journey was made in safety; and, by and by, Palmyre was presented to her new mistress.

The occasion was notable.

In a great chair in the centre sat the _grandpere_, a Chevalier de Grandissime, whose business had narrowed down to sitting on the front veranda and wearing his decorations,--the cross of St.Louis being one; on his right, Colonel Numa Grandissime, with one arm dropped around Honore, then a boy of Palmyre's age, expecting to be off in sixty days for France; and on the left, with Honore's fair sister nestled against her, "Madame Numa," as the Creoles would call her, a stately woman and beautiful, a great admirer of her brother Agricola.