soul of my late master
if I let any harm come to you while there's a spark of life left in my
body?' When they reached home at last the poor old man was stiff and
speechless from exposure, and the coachman was in not much better
plight, though he had the strength to drive round to the stables
himself. To my reproaches for venturing out at all in such weather, she
answered, characteristically, that she could not bear the thought of
abandoning me to my cheerless solitude. It is incomprehensible how it
was that she was allowed to start. I suppose it had to be! She made
light of the cough which came on next day, but shortly afterward
inflammation of the lungs set in, and in three weeks she was no more!
She was the first to be taken away of the young generation under my
care. Behold the vanity of all hopes and fears! I was the most frail
at birth of all the children. For years I remained so delicate that my
parents had but little hope of bringing me up; and yet I have survived
five brothers and two sisters, and many of my contemporaries; I have
outlived my wife and daughter, too--and from all those who have had some
knowledge at least of these old times you alone are left. It has been
my lot to lay in an early grave many honest hearts, many brilliant
promises, many hopes full of life."

He got up briskly, sighed, and left me saying, "We will dine in half an
hour."

Without moving, I listened to his quick steps resounding on the waxed
floor of the next room, traversing the anteroom lined with bookshelves,
where he paused to put his chibouk in the pipe-stand before passing into
the drawing-room (these were all en suite), where he became inaudible
on the thick carpet. But I heard the door of his study-bedroom close. He
was then sixty-two years old and had been for a quarter of a century the
wisest, the firmest, the most indulgent of guardians, extending over me
a paternal care and affection, a moral support which I seemed to feel
always near me in the most distant parts of the earth.

As to Mr. Nicholas B., sub-lieutenant of 1808, lieutenant of 1813 in
the French army, and for a short time _Officier d'Ordonnance_ of Marshal
Marmont; afterward captain in the 2d Regiment of Mounted Rifles in
the Polish army--such as it existed up to 1830 in the reduced kingdom
established by the Congress of Vienna--I must say that from all that
more distant past, known to me traditionally and a little _de visu_, and
called out by the words of