ions he receives occasionally to court balls) his name and fame,
mentioned so often for the last sixteen years by the press of Europe,
has at last penetrated to the valley of the Eastern Pyrenees, where
vegetate three veritable Loras: his father, his eldest brother, and an
old paternal aunt, Mademoiselle Urraca y Lora.

In the maternal line the painter has no relation left except a cousin,
the nephew of his mother, residing in a small manufacturing town in the
department. This cousin was the first to bethink himself of Leon. But
it was not until 1840 that Leon de Lora received a letter from Monsieur
Sylvestre Palafox-Castal-Gazonal (called simply Gazonal) to which he
replied that he was assuredly himself,--that is to say, the son of the
late Leonie Gazonal, wife of Comte Fernand Didas y Lora.

During the summer of 1841 cousin Sylvestre Gazonal went to inform the
illustrious unknown family of Lora that their little Leon had not
gone to the Rio de la Plata, as they supposed, but was now one of the
greatest geniuses of the French school of painting; a fact the family
did not believe. The eldest son, Don Juan de Lora assured his cousin
Gazonal that he was certainly the dupe of some Parisian wag.

Now the said Gazonal was intending to go to Paris to prosecute a lawsuit
which the prefect of the Eastern Pyrenees had arbitrarily removed from
the usual jurisdiction, transferring it to that of the Council of State.
The worthy provincial determined to investigate this act, and to ask
his Parisian cousin the reason of such high-handed measures. It thus
happened that Monsieur Gazonal came to Paris, took shabby lodgings in
the rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, and was amazed to see the palace of
his cousin in the rue de Berlin. Being told that the painter was then
travelling in Italy, he renounced, for the time being, the intention
of asking his advice, and doubted if he should ever find his maternal
relationship acknowledged by so great a man.

During the years 1843 and 1844 Gazonal attended to his lawsuit. This
suit concerned a question as to the current and level of a stream
of water and the necessity of removing a dam, in which dispute the
administration, instigated by the abutters on the river banks, had
meddled. The removal of the dam threatened the existence of Gazonal's
manufactory. In 1845, Gazonal considered his cause as wholly lost; the
secretary of the Master of Petitions, charged with the duty of drawing
up the report, had