rite with every one, though none of us knew
anything about his antecedents. In spite of his English name, he was
decidedly not English, though he spoke the language. He was one of the
best-dressed men of the period, and by a well-dressed man I do not mean
one like Sue. He generally wore a tight-fitting, short-skirted, blue
frock coat, grey trousers, of a shape which since then we have defined
as "pegtops," but the fashion of which was borrowed from the Cossacks.
They are still worn by some French officers in cavalry regiments,
notably crack cavalry regiments.

Major Fraser might have fitly borrowed Piron's epitaph for himself: "Je
ne suis rien, pas meme Academicien." He was a bachelor. He never alluded
to his parentage. He lived by himself, in an entresol at the corner of
the Rue Lafitte and the Boulevard des Italiens. He was always flush of
money, though the sources of his income were a mystery to every one. He
certainly did not live by gambling, as has been suggested since; for
those who knew him best did not remember having seen him touch a card.

I have always had an idea, though I can give no reason for it, that
Major Fraser was the illegitimate son of some exalted personage, and
that the solution of the mystery surrounding him might be found in the
records of the scandals and intrigues at the courts of Charles IV. and
Ferdinand VII. of Spain. The foreign "soldiers of fortune" who rose to
high posts, though not to the highest like Richards and O'Reilly, were
not all of Irish origin. But the man himself was so pleasant in his
intercourse, so uniformly gentle and ready to oblige, that no one cared
to lift a veil which he was so evidently anxious not to have disturbed.
I only remember his getting out of temper once, namely, when Leon
Gozlan, in a comedy of his, introduced a major who had three crosses.
The first had been given to him because he had not one, the second
because he had already one, and the third because all good things
consist of three. Then Major Fraser sent his seconds to the playwright;
the former effected a reconciliation, the more that Gozlan pledged his
word that an allusion to the major was farthest from his thoughts. It
afterwards leaked out that our irrepressible Alexandre Dumas had been
the involuntary cause of all the mischief. One day, while he was talking
to Gozlan, one of his secretaries came in and told him that a particular
bugbear of his, and a great nonentity to boot, had got the Cross