He drew in his elbows, and spread the palms of his hands with a very polite bow, saying, "Bien, bien;" and after murmuring something else in French, which I did not catch, but which I fancy was an acknowledgment of the prior claims of royalty, he folded his hands behind his back and wandered away down the terrace, as I rushed off to my confectionery again.
I found that this use of the old fable, which had calmed my great-grandfather in past days, was no new idea.

It was, in fact, a graceful fiction which deceived nobody, and had been devised by my great-grandmother out of deference to her husband's prejudices.

In the long years when they were very poor, their poverty was made, not only tolerable but graceful, by Mrs.Vandaleur's untiring energy, but (though he wouldn't, or perhaps couldn't, find any occupation by which to add to their income) the sight of his Victoire, who should have been a duchess, doing any menial work so distracted him, that my grandmother had to devise some method to secure herself from his observation when she washed certain bits of priceless lace which redeemed her old dresses from commonness, or cooked some delicacy for Mons.

le Duc's dinner, or mended his honourable clothes.

Thus Jeanette's old fable came into use; first in jest, and then as an adopted form for getting rid of my great-grandfather when he was in the way.