eared a tolerably well-looking youth of nineteen or thereabout, for
the change of garments made me look younger than I was.

As I surveyed myself in the little cracked looking-glass which served me
as a mirror, I could not forbear laughing at the transformation.
Certainly no one would have recognized me, for I could scarcely
recognize myself.

Folding the old cloak around me, I sallied forth. With the long, thick
braid of hair I had cut from my head, I purchased a breakfast, the best
I had eaten in a long time.

Then I went direct to the residence of the gentleman who had said I
would suit him exactly, if I were a young man. There had been something
in the tone of this gentleman's letter that attracted me, I could not
tell why. To my great joy, he had not yet found the person he wanted;
and after a short conversation he engaged me, at what seemed to me a
princely salary.

He told me laughingly that a young woman had applied for the situation a
short time previous; and seemed very much amused at the circumstance.

My employer was a man already past his prime. His hair was slightly
sprinkled with gray, and his form showed that tendency to fullness so
frequently found in persons of sedentary habits. But in his fine,
thoughtful eyes, and expansive brow, one saw evidence of that noble
intellect for which he was distinguished, while his beaming smile and
pleasant voice showed a genial and benevolent heart. The kindness of his
voice and manner went straight to my lonely and desolate heart, and
affected me so much that I almost disgraced my manhood by bursting into
tears.

He occupied a modest but commodious house in the Quartier Latin. His
domestic affairs were administered by a respectable-looking elderly man,
who performed the part of cook, to his own honor and the entire
satisfaction of his master; while a smart but mischievous imp of a boy
ran of errands, tended the fires, swept the rooms, and kept old
Dominique in a continual fret, by his tricks and his short-comings.

Here, in the well-furnished library of my new master, with every
convenience for annotation and elucidation, the translation of the Vedas
was commenced. Like my father, my employer was possessed of vast
erudition; but, unlike him, he was also a man of the world, high in
favor at court, wealthy, honored, and enjoying the friendship of all the
most noted savans and other celebrities of the metropolis. During the
progress of the work some of these woul