The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1891-08-21

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and this is y0ltr first Uistt to AmcricG2"
Tom Bannick and his wife soon moved
into their new quarters, and Mrs. Raven
and Olympia accompanied them. Olym-
pia, indeed, had felt somewhat sensitive
about keeping up such intimate relations
with people now grown wealthy, but she
yielded to the Bannicks' obviously sin
cere protestations. Besides, the price
given for her pictures by Count de Lisle
and his promise to order another made
her feel almost rich herself.
One morning while she was painting
in the little room set apart for her studio,
and her mother and Mrs. Bannick were
out shopping, the Count de Lisle's card
was brought in to her. Hes come to
give me the order!" she said to herself,
and rejecting that it would be business
like to receive him in her studio, palette
in hand, she babe the servant conduct
him in.
He presently appeared, filling up the
doorway with his tall, military figure
Olympia, rising, glanced at his yellow,
upright hair, his shining eyeglasses, and
his short, pointed beard, and feared she
would find him tiresome. But he had
been so good to her friends and herself,
and rumOr made him out so extraor-
binary a parsonage, that she was dis
posed to make the most Of any promising
traits he might display.
Il interrupt you at your work." said
he, bowling, and looking so very French,
and with so marked French accent,
that Olympia unconsciously replied to
him in the Gallo tongue, which she
spoke really as well as her own. ''Mais
non, monsieur" said she; "vous ne
m'incommode pas lie moirs du monde;
apropos, c'est de mon Outrage que mons
avous causer, restu pas?"
This evidently pleased the count very
much, and put him completely at his
ease. He sat down on the little sofa in
the window. Olympia remained at her
easel, but laid away her palette and
brushes, and they were soon chatting to-
gether in the language of Paris with the
freedom and vivacity of old acquaint-
ances. Olympia did not find the count
the stiff and rather portentous being
that she had pictured him from Toms
description.
''And is this your first visit to Amer
ica?" she inquired at length.
81 feel already so much at home that
I can hardly think it is my first" he re-
piled, land am nearly decided to make
this my home France is not, or ever
will be, the France she was"
''Then, you are an imperialist? But we
have no emperors here"
"Frenchmen are not like Americans;
they need the strong hand. The De
Lisles were Frenchmen generations be-
fore the first Napoleon left Corsica. They
were monarchists; but at present there
is still less hope for the king than for the
emperor. AS for me, was with Ma
poleon during the war with Germany,
and owe him much"
"You knew Napoleon himself? Did
you like him?"
81 owe him much" repeated the count.
81 cannot criticise him. He was great
adventurer, and he conquered fortune
for a time"
"But what did he do especially for
your"
"Well," said the count, hesitating a
little, she gave me the Cross of the
Legion, and he gave me my title. Ny
father was a plain gentleman.
"What had you done to win the cross?'
The count smiled. 81 was not a great
soldier" he said, "but had good luck.
Opportunities came in my way. You re-
member that Bazaine fought at the battle
of Gravelotte, near Metz, on the eigh-
tenth of August"
Olympia nodded. "And he shut him
self up in Metz the same night!'
eyes; I see you are not ignorant of
these things. Well, then, he wished to
send news to MacMahon, who was some
where to the west of us-it might be fifty
miles or it might be a hundred. 1t was
really hundred, as it turned out, for
found him at Rheims, and lost another
thirty miles by wandering"
"You bore the dispatches from Bazaine
to MacMahon, them"
81 did, and 1 had an unpleasant time
of it. Ny first horse was killed; my Sec
ond was drowned; was myself wounded
slightly in the leg and in the arm with
one thing and another. I was three