hich the
present historian is not responsible.

Colleville was the only son of a talented musician, formerly first
violin at the Opera under Francoeur and Rebel, who related, at least
six times a month during his lifetime, anecdotes concerning the
representations of the "Village Seer"; and mimicked Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, taking him off to perfection. Colleville and Thuillier were
inseparable friends; they had no secrets from each other, and their
friendship, begun at fifteen years of age, had never known a cloud up to
the year 1839. The former was one of those employees who are called,
in the government offices, pluralists. These clerks are remarkable
for their industry. Colleville, a good musician, owed to the name
and influence of his father a situation as first clarionet at the
Opera-Comique, and so long as he was a bachelor, Colleville, who was
rather richer than Thuillier, shared his means with his friend. But,
unlike Thuillier, Colleville married for love a Mademoiselle Flavie,
the natural daughter of a celebrated danseuse at the Opera; her reputed
father being a certain du Bourguier, one of the richest contractors
of the day. In style and origin, Flavie was apparently destined for
a melancholy career, when Colleville, often sent to her mother's
apartments, fell in love with her and married her. Prince Galathionne,
who at that time was "protecting" the danseuse, then approaching the end
of her brilliant career, gave Flavie a "dot" of twenty thousand francs,
to which her mother added a magnificent trousseau. Other friends and
opera-comrades sent jewels and silver-ware, so that the Colleville
household was far richer in superfluities than in capital. Flavie,
brought up in opulence, began her married life in a charming apartment,
furnished by her mother's upholsterer, where the young wife, who was
full of taste for art and for artists, and possessed a certain elegance,
ruled, a queen.

Madame Colleville was pretty and piquant, clever, gay, and graceful;
to express her in one sentence,--a charming creature. Her mother, the
danseuse, now forty-three years old, retired from the stage and went
to live in the country,--thus depriving her daughter of the resources
derived from her wasteful extravagance. Madame Colleville kept a very
agreeable but extremely free and easy household. From 1816 to 1826 she
had five children. Colleville, a musician in the evening, kept the books
of a merchant from seven to nine in the morning