ving child, and for that reason doubly precious to my parents. A
little daughter had first been born to them; a child, I have heard, the
very counterpart of her mother--frail, delicate, and too good for earth;
her soul too pure and her face too fair. At the age of three, when she
was budding into loveliest rose-blossom, she went back to the angels.

"There never was any fear of that sort for me. From the first I was
strong and sturdy, escaping even the ordinary ailments of childhood. So
far I saved my parents all anxiety. Their only care was to check my high
and venturesome spirit, which now would cause me to be fished up from
the bottom of shallow waters; and now would bring me down to earth with
a broken olive-bough that possibly had borne fruit for centuries and
might have done so for ages yet to come. I never came to harm. A special
providence watched over me--I record it with all reverence.

"As the bird flies my home was not so very far from here, though it was
in France, not Spain. We lived in one of the loveliest spots of fair
Provence, where indeed the earth brought forth abundantly all her fruits
and flowers.

"My mother had offended her family by her marriage, yet in no sense of
the word was my father her inferior. But she was of noble birth and he
was not, though a patrician. He was a gentleman in all his thoughts and
deeds, a great landed proprietor, a man of vast intellectual culture and
refinement. The _mesalliance_ her people chose to see in the matter
existed only in their worldly minds and wicked ambitions. For to marry
my father she had refused the Duke of G., an empty-headed _bon vivant_,
with nothing but his title and wealth to recommend him. For fifteen
years my mother's life was happy as life on earth can be. The day came
when her people acknowledged the wisdom of her choice, the hollowness of
theirs. But one circumstance in her father I have always thought
condoned all his obstinacy. He finally yielded to her wishes. Without
this the marriage would have been impossible. When he saw that her very
existence depended upon it, he at length dismissed the duke and gave his
consent--reluctantly, with a bad grace it must be admitted, but it was
done. The duke married elsewhere. Wild, unprincipled, unstable as water,
he entangled himself in all sorts of intrigues, gambled, and finally
fell into embarrassment. Not until then was my father really and truly
received without reservation as a son of the famil