the price she had intended to ask. This was deducting five francs more
than poor Adrienne got for the money she had expended for her
beautiful lace, and for all her toil, sleepless nights, and tears; a proof of
the commissionaire's scale of doing business. The bargain was now
commenced in earnest, offering an instructive scene of French
protestations, assertions, contradictions and volubility on one side, and
of cold, seemingly phlegmatic, but wily Yankee calculation, on the
other. Desiree had set her price at one hundred and fifty francs, after
abating the fifty mentioned, and Colonel Silky had early made up his
mind to give only one hundred. After making suitable allowances for my
true value before I was embellished, the cost of the lace and of the
work, Desiree was not far from the mark; but the Colonel saw that she
wanted money, and he knew that two napoleons and a half, with his
management, would carry him from Paris to Havre. It is true he had
spent the difference that morning on an eye-glass that he never used, or
when he did it was only to obscure his vision; but the money was not
lost, as it aided in persuading the world he was a colonel and was
afflicted with that genteel defect, an imperfect vision. These extremes of
extravagance and meanness were not unusual in his practice. The one,
in truth, being a consequence of the other.

{management = in Cooper's time, a word suggesting conniving or
unscrupulous manipulation; Havre = le Havre, an important French
port}

"You forget the duty, Desiree," observed the military trader; "this
compromise law is a thousand times worse than any law we have ever
had in America."

{compromise law = the American Tariff Act of 1832, which reduced