n intensity of interest in my
excursions such as I had never experienced before. The driver of the
coach was an Englishman by the name of Nunn. I mention this here, as he
eventually became my servant, and will appear again in the narrative.

To the Parisian hotel proprietor and shopkeeper the American visitor is
truly a providence. "Mine host" looks to him for loaves and fishes, and
is never deceived. The antics of our rich countrymen in Paris are
portentous in their amazing prodigality, and I fear we are the laughing
stock of the shopkeepers there.

At the Cafe Riche and Tortoni's I have seen extravagances in ordering
expensive wines and viands by my countrymen that made me regret that the
fools who were being served were not forced to toil for the mere
necessaries of existence. Certainly they were unworthy stewards of the
wealth heaven or the other place had bestowed on them by inheritance. I
remember one boy there throwing away in vice and dissipation the fortune
his father had through years of a long life spent toilsome hours in
accumulating. I sat at a table near him on several occasions, when,
after his banquet was half over, he used to reward the waiter with a
five-hundred franc note ($100), but the proprietor was ever close at
hand and would instantly despoil the garcon of his prize. He was
companioned by a member of the demi-monde, who, when arrayed in male
attire, as she was nightly, would cut up enough monkey tricks in one
night at the Valentino or Mabille to have made the fortunes of all our
comic paper artists had they been on the spot to catch her antics with a
kodak and then lay them before an admiring public.

The fortune this boy had inherited was unfortunately too vast and too
well-invested by his overfond and madly foolish father for the son to
run through it entirely. A very few years left him an imbecile in body
and mind, to become the prey of a parcel of sharks who, dressing in
purple and fine linen and faring sumptuously every day, held him in a
state of abject slavery and fear. One day, aboard his own yacht, off
Naples, they married him to a notorious woman. Under the guardianship of
his wife and her villain paramour he wandered like a spectre amid the
scene of his former riot.

For long at Monte Carlo he lingered like a ghost, and at last died in
Florence. The American colony attended his funeral in a body, while his
widow, dissolved in tears, refused to be comforted. Although many dark
stor