He inherited his father's share in the mine of which I am
part owner, and has therefore no need to serve an evil
cause. He was born in New Orleans of Northern parents, spent
two years in the School of Mines in Paris, and until this
wretched war broke out has lived for some years among mining
camps and in the ruffian life of the far West. It is a fair
chance which side turns up, the ways of the salon, the
accuracy of the man of science, or the savagery of the
Rockies. You will like him.

He has been twice wounded, and then had the good sense to
acquire the mild typhoid fever which gave him an excuse to
ask for leave of absence. He has no diplomatic or political
errand, and goes abroad merely to recruit his health. Things
here are not yet quite as bad as I could desire to see
them. Antietam was unfortunate, but in the end the European
States will recognize the South and end the war. I shall
then reside in Richmond.

Yours truly,

_Harry Wellwood._

I hoped that the imperial government profited by my uncle's letter. It
was or may have been of use, as things turned out, in freeing Captain
Merton from police observation, which at this time rarely failed to
keep under notice every American.

I was kept busy at the legation two thirds of the following day. At
five I set out in a coupe having Alphonse on the seat with the
coachman. He left cards for me at a half-dozen houses, and then I told
him to order the driver to leave me at Rue du Roi de Rome, No.
12.--Captain Merton's address.

As I sat in the carriage and looked out at the exterior gaiety of the
open-air life of Paris, my mind naturally turned in contrast to the
war at home and the terrible death harvest of Antietam, news of which
had lately reached Europe. The sense of isolation in a land of hostile
opinion often oppressed me, and rarely was as despotic as on this
afternoon. I turned for relief to speculative thought of the
numberless dramas of the lives of the busy multitude among which I
drove. I wondered how many lived simple and uneventful days, like
mine, in the pursuit of mere official or domestic duties. Not the
utmost imaginative ingenuity of the novelist could have anticipated,
as I rode along amidst the hurries and the leisures of a Parisian
afternoon, that my next hour or two was about to bring into the
mono