ealth
of semi-tropical vegetation were suggestive of an earthly Paradise.
Since we last met my hostess had become a widow, but fortunately she and
her only son, who was then just emerging into manhood, had not felt the
personal vicissitudes of the struggle, as they had taken refuge in the
mountains of North Carolina. Before the war the Winthrops had owned
hundreds of slaves and most of them, in a state of freedom, were still
living in quarters only a short distance from the house and were working
on her plantations just as though the war had not made them free. But
both among those who suffered from the war and those who escaped its
ravages the unfriendly feeling entertained at this time against their
Northern brethren was naturally intense. I remember that one Sunday
morning a young son of Mrs. Custis, who with his mother was then an
inmate of the Winthrop household, asked his mother, who had just
returned from the early service of the Episcopal Church, whether "the
'Yankees' went up to the same communion table with the Southern people."

During my Tallahassee life I made the acquaintance of Madame Achille
Murat, who lived in an old mansion outside of the city limits. She was
Miss Catharine A. Willis of Virginia, and a great-grandniece of General
Washington. Upon her marriage to Achille Murat he took her abroad, where
she was received with much distinction on account of her Washington
blood. Then, too, her marriage into such an illustrious French family
was an open sesame to the most exclusive circles of society. She was an
elderly woman when I met her, but her conversation abounded with the
most interesting reminiscences of her life in France. She died in the
summer of 1867. Achille Murat was the son of Joachim Murat, the great
Marshal of Napoleon, whose sister Caroline he married and became King of
Naples. Many years later his two sons came to this country. One of them
settled in Bordentown in New Jersey, and Achille Murat, after his
marriage to his Virginia bride, became a resident of Florida. Madame
Murat told me of some of the visits she made to France when the voyage
was long and tedious. She had many articles of _vertu_ around her, and I
especially recall a superb marble bust by Canova of her mother-in-law,
Queen Caroline. I expressed surprise at the extreme attractiveness of
the late Queen, as I had always understood that the Princess Pauline,
Napoleon's other sister, was the family beauty. Madame Murat, however