ge. Born at Marseilles, he was left an orphan at about the age of
fourteen, alone in the world with one little sister still in the cradle,
whom he brought up, and who subsequently became my mother: hence his
tender regard for me. Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the fact that we
two constituted the whole family, I only saw him during the intervals on
shore of his sea-faring life. Endowed with truly remarkable qualities
and with an energy that recognized no obstacles, he was the best fellow
in the world, as you must have observed for yourself; but certainly he
was also, from what I know of him, a most original character. I don't
believe that in the course of his eventful career, he ever did a single
act like other men, unless, may be, in the getting of children--yet even
these were only his "god-children." He has left fourteen in the
Department of Le Gard, scattered over the different estates on which he
lived by turns after he had quitted the East; and we may well believe he
would not have stopped short at that number, but that four months ago,
as he was returning from the South Pole, he happened to die of a
sunstroke, at the age of sixty-three. This last touch completes the
picture of his life. As to his history, all that is known of it is
confined to the following facts:

At the age of twenty-two my uncle turned Turk, from political
conviction. This happened under the Bourbons. The character of his
services in Turkey during the contests between Mehemet Ali and the
Sultan was never very clear, and I fancy he was rather muddled about
them himself, for he served both these princes by turns with equal
courage and equal devotion. As it happened, he was on the side of
Ibrahim at the time that the latter defeated the Turks at the battle of
Konieh; but being carried away in that desperate charge which he himself
led, and which decided the victory, my unfortunate uncle suffered the
disgrace of falling wounded into the hands of the vanquished party.
Being a prisoner to Kurchid-Pasha, and his wound having soon healed, he
was expecting to be impaled, when, to his great joy, his punishment was
commuted to that of the galleys. There he remained three years without
succeeding in effecting his escape, when one fine day he found his
services in request just at the right time by the Sultan, who appointed
him Pasha, giving him a command in the Syrian wars. What circumstance
was it that cut short his political career? How was it that he