hadow on him now, I think, than immediately after his
misfortunes; the old, equable truth weighs down upon him, and makes him
sensible that the good days of his life have probably all been enjoyed,
and that the rest is likely to be endurance, not enjoyment. His temper
is still sweet and warm, yet, I half fancy, not wholly unacidulated by
his troubles--but now I have written it, I decide that it is not so,
and blame myself for surmising it. But it seems most unnatural that
so buoyant and expansive a character should have fallen into the
helplessness of commercial misfortune; it is most grievous to hear his
manly and cheerful allusions to it, and even his jokes upon it; as,
for example, when we suggested how pleasant it would be to have him
accompany us to Paris, and he jestingly spoke of the personal restraint
under which he now lived. On his departure, Julian and I walked a good
way down Oxford Street and Holborn with him, and I took leave of him
with the truest wishes for his welfare."

The next day we embarked at Folkestone for France, and our new life
began.

XIII

Old-Homesickness--The Ideal and the Real--A beautiful but
perilous woman with a past--The Garden of Eden a Montreal
ice-palace--Confused mountain of family luggage--Poplars for
lances--Miraculous crimson comforters--Rivers of human gore--
Curling mustachios and nothing to do--Odd behavior of grown
people--Venus, the populace, and the MacDaniels--The
happiness to die in Paris--Lived alone with her
constellations--"O'Brien's Belt"--A hotel of peregrinations--
Sitting up late--Attempted assassination--My murderer--An
old passion reawakened--Italian shells and mediaeval sea-
anemones--If you were in the Garden of Eden--An umbrella
full of napoleons--Was Byron an Esquimau?

No doubt my father had grown fond of England during his four years'
residence there. Except for its profits he had not, indeed, liked the
consular work; but even that had given zest to his several excursions
from it, which were in themselves edifying and enjoyable. The glamour of
tradition, too, had wrought upon him, and he had made friends and formed
associations. Such influences, outwardly gentle and unexacting, take
deeper hold of the soul than we are at the time aware. They show
their strength only when we test them by removing ourselves from their
physical sphere.

Accordingly, though he looked forward with p