t on their own
exertions for support. Gabriel unfortunately knew this circumstance too
well, and on the faith of his father's fortune indulged in habits of
extravagance and dissipation as ruinous as they were disgraceful. The
captain did not live to witness the complete degradation of his favorite
son. His vessel was wrecked on a homeward voyage, and the waves became
the sailor's winding-sheet. His wife did not long survive him. She died,
pining for the genial air of her own sunny clime, leaving the impress of
her virtues and her graces on the character of one of her sons. Alas for
the other!

Free now from parental restraint, as he had long been from moral
obligations, Gabriel plunged into the wildest excesses of dissipation.
In vain Henry lifted his warning voice, in vain he extended his guardian
hand, to save him who had now become the slave as well as the votary of
vice. His soul clave to his brother with a tenderness of affection,
which neither his selfishness nor vices, not even his crimes, could
destroy. A gambler, a rouee, every thing but a drunkard, he at length
became involved in so disgraceful a transaction, he was compelled for
safety to flee the country; and Henry, ignorant what course he had
taken, gave him up in despair, and tried to forget the existence of one
whose remembrance could only awaken sorrow and shame. He went to Europe,
as has been previously related, and with the eye of a painter and the
heart of a poet, travelled from clime to clime, and garnered up in his
imagination the sublimities of nature and the wonders of art. His genius
grew and blossomed amid the warm and fostering influences of an elder
world, till it formed, as it were, a bower around him, in whose
perennial shades he could retire from haunting memories and uncongenial
associations.

In the mean time, Gabriel had found refuge in his mother's native land.
During his wild, roving life, he had mingled much with foreigners, and
acquired a perfect knowledge of the French language,--I should rather
say his knowledge was perfected by practice, for the twin brothers had
been taught from infancy the melodious and expressive language of their
mother's native clime. The facility with which he conversed, and his
extremely handsome person, were advantages whose value he well knew how
to appreciate, and to make subservient to his use.

It was at this time that he became acquainted with Theresa Josephine La
Fontaine, and his worn and sated p