But Theophile, a dark, graceful youth of eighteen, though he is recounting something with all the oblivious ardor of his kind, becomes instantly silent, bows with grave deference to the ladies, hands the aged forefather gracefully to his seat, and turning, recommences the recital before one who hears all with the same perfect courtesy--his beloved cousin Honore.
Meanwhile, the gentlemen throng out.

Gallant crew! These are they who have been pausing proudly week after week in an endeavor ( ?) to understand the opaque motives of Numa's son.
In the middle of the veranda pauses a tall, muscular man of fifty, with the usual smooth face and an iron-gray queue.

That is Colonel Agamemnon Brahmin de Grandissime, purveyor to the family's military pride, conservator of its military glory, and, after Honore, the most admired of the name.

Achille Grandissime, he who took Agricola away from Frowenfeld's shop in the carriage, essays to engage Agamemnon in conversation, and the colonel, with a glance at his kinsman's nether limbs and another at his own, and with that placid facility with which the graver sort of Creoles take up the trivial topics of the lighter, grapples the subject of boots.

A tall, bronzed, slender young man, who prefixes to Grandissime the maternal St.Blancard, asks where his wife is, is answered from a distance, throws her a kiss and sits down on a step, with Jean Baptiste de Grandissime, a piratical-looking black-beard, above him, and Alphonse Mandarin, an olive-skinned boy, below.