, that the salons on the top floor were brilliantly
illuminated. A table had been laid for twenty persons, who were to join
in a banquet in honor of the winner of the great military steeplechase
at La Marche, which had taken place a few days before. The victorious
gentleman-rider was, strange to say, an officer of infantry--an
unprecedented thing in the annals of this sport.

Heir to a seigneurial estate, which had been elevated to a marquisate in
the reign of Louis XII, son of a father who had the strictest notions as
to the preservation of pure blood, Henri de Prerolles, early initiated
into the practice of the breaking and training of horses, was at
eighteen as bold and dashing a rider as he was accomplished in other
physical exercises; and although, three years later, at his debut at St.
Cyr, he expressed no preference for entering the cavalry service, for
which his early training and rare aptitude fitted him, it was because,
in the long line of his ancestors--which included a marshal of France
and a goodly number of lieutenants-general--all, without exception, from
Ravenna to Fontenoy, had won renown as commanders of infantry.

At the outbreak of the French Revolution, Henri's grandfather, who had
distinguished himself in the American War for Independence, left
his native land only when he was in the last extremity. As soon as
circumstances permitted, he reentered France with his son, upon whom
Napoleon conferred a brevet rank, which the recipient accepted of his
free will. He began his military experience in Spain, returned safe and
well from the retreat from Russia, and fought valiantly at Bautzen and
at Dresden. The Restoration--by which time he had become chief of his
battalion--could not fail to advance his career; and the line was about
to have another lieutenant-general added to its roll, when the events of
1830 decided Field-Marshal the Marquis de Prerolles to sheathe his
sword forever, and to withdraw to his own estate, near the forest of
l'Ile-d'Adam, where hunting and efforts toward the improvement of the
equine race occupied his latter years.

He died in 1860, a widower, leaving two children: Jeanne, recently
married to the Duc de Montgeron, and his son Henri, then a pupil in
a military school, who found himself, on reaching his majority, in
possession of the chateau and domains of Prerolles, the value of which
was from fifteen to eighteen hundred thousand francs.

Having been made sub-lieutenant by