I walked Paris and the
suburbs, viewing and pricing houses for my new establishment, or covered
ourselves with dust and returned laden with Chinese gods and brass
warming-pans from the dealers in antiquities. I found Pinkerton well
up in the situation of these establishments as well as in the current
prices, and with quite a smattering of critical judgment; it turned out
he was investing capital in pictures and curiosities for the States, and
the superficial thoroughness of the creature appeared in the fact, that
although he would never be a connoisseur, he was already something of
an expert. The things themselves left him as near as may be cold; but he
had a joy of his own in understanding how to buy and sell them.

In such engagements the time passed until I might very well expect
an answer from my father. Two mails followed each other, and brought
nothing. By the third I received a long and almost incoherent letter
of remorse, encouragement, consolation, and despair. From this pitiful
document, which (with a movement of piety) I burned as soon as I had
read it, I gathered that the bubble of my father's wealth was burst,
that he was now both penniless and sick; and that I, so far from
expecting ten thousand dollars to throw away in juvenile extravagance,
must look no longer for the quarterly remittances on which I lived. My
case was hard enough; but I had sense enough to perceive, and decency
enough to do my duty. I sold my curiosities, or rather I sent Pinkerton
to sell them; and he had previously bought and now disposed of them so
wisely that the loss was trifling. This, with what remained of my last
allowance, left me at the head of no less than five thousand francs.
Five hundred I reserved for my own immediate necessities; the rest I
mailed inside of the week to my father at Muskegon, where they came in
time to pay his funeral expenses.

The news of his death was scarcely a surprise and scarce a grief to me.
I could not conceive my father a poor man. He had led too long a life
of thoughtless and generous profusion to endure the change; and though I
grieved for myself, I was able to rejoice that my father had been taken
from the battle. I grieved, I say, for myself; and it is probable there
were at the same date many thousands of persons grieving with less
cause. I had lost my father; I had lost the allowance; my whole fortune
(including what had been returned from Muskegon) scarce amounted to
a thousand francs;