f
tradition. All was lost and forgotten; and of all her hereditary wealth,
station, and honors, Hortense de Sainte Aulaire retained nothing but her
father's sword and her ancestral name.

--Not even the latter for many weeks, O discerning reader! for before
the golden harvest was gathered in, we two were wedded.

CHAPTER LVI.

BRINGETH THIS TRUE STORY TO AN END.

Ye who have traced the pilgrim to the scene
Which is his last, if in your memories dwell
A thought that once was his, if on ye swell
A single recollection, not in vain
He wore his sandal shoon and scallop-shell.

BYRON.

Having related the story of my life as it happened, incident by
incident, and brought it down to that point at which stories are wont to
end, I find that I have little to add respecting others. My narrative
from first to last has been purely personal. The one love of my life was
Hortense--the one friend of my life, Oscar Dalrymple. The catalogue of
my acquaintances would scarcely number so many names as I have fingers
on one hand. The two first are still mine; the latter, having been
brought forward only in so far as they re-acted upon my feelings or
modified my experiences, have become, for the most part, mere memories,
and so vanish, ghost-like, from the page. Franz Mueller is studying in
Rome, having carried off a prize at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, which
entitles him to three years at the Villa Medici, that Ultima Thule of
the French art-student's ambition. I hear that he is as full of whim and
jest as ever, and the very life of the Cafe Greco. May I some day hear
his pleasant laugh again! Dr. Cheron, I believe, is still practising in
Paris; and Monsieur de Simoncourt, I have no doubt, continues to
exercise the profession of Chevalier d'Industrie, with such failures and
successes as are incidental to that career.

As for my early _amourettes_, they have disappeared from my path as
utterly as though they had never crossed it. Of Madame de Marignan, I
have neither heard, nor desired to hear, more. Even Josephine's pretty
face is fast fading from my memory. It is ever thus with the transient
passions of _our premiere jeunesse._ We believe in them for the moment,
and waste laughter and tears, chaplets and sackcloth, upon them.
Presently the delusion passes; the earnest heart within us is awakened;
and we know that till now we have been mere actors in "a masquerade of
dreams." The chaplets were woven