anker on whom my draft was drawn. A letter of introduction to a
French family was enclosed in the letter, and he engaged me to visit
them, for they had been his guests for a long time when the first
Revolution caused them to fly France, and they were under other
obligations to him; which I afterward learned from themselves was a
pecuniary favor more than once renewed during their residence with him.
Ten thousand dollars was a good deal of money to be placed at the
disposition of a young man as his pocket money for eighteen months, even
after a large deduction had been made from it for a library and
professional instruments.

Before I quitted Edinburgh, I received a letter from the gentleman to
whom my uncle had given me an introduction; he acquainted me that my
uncle had informed him that I was about visiting France, and that he had
taken the liberty of introducing me to him. The Marquis de ---- (such
was his title--his name I omit for obvious reasons) expressed with
great warmth his delight at having it in his power to exhibit the
gratitude he felt to my uncle, and urged me with the most pressing terms
to come at once to his home, and pass away there at least so much time
as might accustom me to the _spoken_ French language (I could easily
read it), that my visit to Paris might be more profitable and
agreeable--and it should be both, he was so good as to say, at least as
far as it depended on himself and his friends. I wrote him by the return
mail to thank him for his kindness, and to inform him that I should at
once set out for his hospitable home. I shall never forget the six
months I passed away in the Chateau de Bardy: the happiness of those
days was checkered only by my departure and by the incident I shall
presently relate. And even after I quitted that noble mansion, the
kindness of its inmates still watched over me, and opened homes to me
even in that great Maelstrom of life--Paris.

It was toward the end of the month of October--the most delightful month
of the seasons in France--as I was returning on foot from Orleans to the
Chateau de Bardy, from a rather prolonged pedestrian exploration in that
interesting neighborhood, where I had accurately examined all of the
curiosities, thanks to an ample memoir of my noble host (in those days
'Handbooks' were unknown, and Murray was busy publishing Byron and
Moore), when I thought I caught a glimpse of some soldiers. I was not
mistaken: on the road before me a Prussi