has grown stout, drinks beer, and smokes a meerschaum, but is still
known on the principal promenade, and in the casino of the German town
in which he resides, as "the handsome American." He is said, however, to
have spells of melancholy.

The "Chevalier Bainrothan," and the "Lady Charlotte Fremont," his
step-daughter, for as such she passes, for some quaint or wicked reason
unrevealed to society, with their respectable and hideous house-keeper,
Madame Clayton, dwell under the same roof, and enjoy the privilege of
access to the _salon_ of the baroness, and a weekly game of _ecarte_ at
her _soirees_, usually profitable to the chevalier in a small way.

All this did Major Favraud, in his own merry mood, communicate to us on
the occasion of his memorable visit to San Francisco, when he remained
our delighted guest during one long delicious summer season. Of Gregory,
we never heard.

"I had hoped to hear of your marriage long before this," I said to him
one day. "Tell me why you have not wedded some fair lady before this
time. Now tell me frankly as you can."

"Simply because you did not wait for me."

"Nonsense! the truth. I want no _badinage_"

"Because, then--because I never could forget Celia--never love any one
else."

"She was one of Swedenborg's angels. Major Favraud--no real wife of
yours. She never was married"--and I shook my head--"only united to a
being of the earth with whom she had no real affinity. Choose yours
elsewhere."

"I believe you are half right," he said, sadly. "She never seemed to
belong to me by right--only a bird I had caught and caged, that loved me
well, yet was eager to escape."

"Such, was the state of the case, I cannot doubt; a more out and out
flesh-and-blood organization would suit you better. Your life is not
half spent; the dreary time is to come. Go back to Bellevue, and get you
a kind companion, and let children climb your knees, and surround your
hearth. You would be so much happier."

"Suggest one, then. Come, help me to a wife."

"No, no, I can make no matches; but you know Madame de St. Aube is a
widow now. You were always congenial."

"Yes, but"--with a shrug of his shoulders, worthy of a Frenchman--"_que
voulez vous_? That woman has five children already, and a plantation
mortgaged to Maginnis!"

"Maginnis again! The very name sends a chill through my bones! No, that
will never do. Some maiden lady, then--some sage person of thirty-four
or five."

"I do not fa