Before reaching the Park Street gate, I had taken up the thread of
thought which he had unconsciously broken; yet throughout the day this
old young man, with his unwrinkled brow and silvered locks, glided in
like a phantom between me and my duties.

The next morning I again encountered him on The Mall. He was resting
lazily on the green rails, watching two little sloops in distress, which
two ragged ship-owners had consigned to the mimic perils of the Pond.
The vessels lay becalmed in the middle of the ocean, displaying a
tantalizing lack of sympathy with the frantic helplessness of the owners
on shore. As the gentleman observed their dilemma, a light came into his
faded eyes, then died out, leaving them drearier than before. I wondered
if he, too, in his time, had sent out ships that drifted and drifted and
never came to port; and if these poor toys were to him types of his own
losses.

"I would like to know that man's story," I said, half aloud, halting in
one of those winding paths which branch off from the quietness of the
Pond, and end in the rush and tumult of Tremont Street.

"Would you?" replied a voice at my side. I turned and faced Mr. H----, a
neighbor of mine, who laughed heartily at finding me talking to myself.
"Well," he added, reflectingly, "I can tell you this man's story; and if
you will match the narrative with anything as curious, I shall be glad
to hear it."

"You know him then?"

"Yes and no. I happened to be in Paris when he was buried."

"Buried!"

"Well, strictly speaking, not buried; but something quite like it. If
you've a spare half-hour," continued my interlocutor, "we'll sit on this
bench, and I will tell you all I know of an affair that made some noise
in Paris a couple of years ago. The gentleman himself, standing yonder,
will serve as a sort of frontispiece to the romance,--a full-page
illustration, as it were."

The following pages contain the story that Mr. H---- related to me.
While he was telling it, a gentle wind arose; the miniature sloops
drifted feebly about the ocean; the wretched owners flew from point to
point, as the deceptive breeze promised to waft the barks to either
shore; the early robins trilled now and then from the newly fringed
elms; and the old young man leaned on the rail in the sunshine, wearily,
little dreaming that two gossips were discussing his affairs within
twenty yards of him.

* * * * *

Three people were sitt