her mother was Irish, and I think grandmamma still speaks French with
an accent. (I hope she will never know I said that.) Her name was
Mademoiselle de Calincourt, the daughter of the Marquis de Calincourt,
whose family had owned Calincourt since the time of Charlemagne
or something before that. So it was annoying for them to have had
their heads chopped off and to be obliged to live in Dublin on
nothing a year. The grandmother of grandmamma, Ambrosine Eustasie
de Calincourt, after whom I am called, was a famous character. She
was so good-looking that Robespierre offered to let her retain her
head if she would give him a kiss, but she preferred to drive to the
guillotine in the cart with her friends, only she took a rose to keep
off the smell of the common people, and, they say, ran up the steps
smiling. Grandmamma has her miniature, and it is, she says, exactly
like me.

I have heard that grandmamma's marriage with grandpapa--an
Englishman--was considered at the time to be a very suitable affair.
He had also ancestors since before Edward the Confessor. However,
unfortunately, a few years after their marriage (grandmamma was
really _un peu passée_ when that took place) grandpapa made a
_bêtise_--something political or diplomatic, but I have never heard
exactly what; anyway, it obliged them to leave hurriedly and go to
America. Grandmamma never speaks of her life there or of grandpapa,
so I suppose he died, because when I first remember things we were
crossing to France in a big ship--just papa, grandmamma, and I. My
mother died when I was born. She was an American of one of the first
original families in Virginia; that is all I know of her. We have
never had a great many friends--even when we lived in Paris--because,
you see, as a rule people don't live so long as grandmamma, and the
other maids of honor of the court of Charles X. were all buried years