t it? Suppose the wealth of the universe were
divided per capita, how long would it remain out of the clutches of the
Napoleons of finance, only a percentage of whom find ultimately their
Waterloo, little to the profit of the poor who spin and delve, who fight
and die, in the Grand Army of the Wretched!

III

We read a deal that is amusing about the southerly Frenchman. He is
indeed _sui generis_. Some five and twenty years ago there appeared in
Louisville a dapper gentleman, who declared himself a Marseillais,
and who subsequently came to be known variously as The Major and
The Frenchman. I shall not mention him otherwise in this veracious
chronicle, but, looking through the city directory of Marseilles I found
an entire page devoted to his name, though all the entries may not have
been members of his family. There is no doubt that he was a Marseillais.

Wandering through the streets of the old city, now in a cafe of La
Cannebiere and now along a quay of the Old Port, his ghost has often
crossed my path and dogged my footsteps, though he has lain in his grave
this many a day. I grew to know him very well, to be first amused by
him, then to be interested, and in the end to entertain an affection for
him.

The Major was a delightful composite of Tartarin of Tarascon and the
Brigadier Gerard, with a dash of the Count of Monte Cristo; for when he
was flush--which by some odd coincidence happened exactly four times a
year--he was as liberal a spendthrift as one could wish to meet anywhere
between the little principality of Monaco and the headwaters of the
Nile; transparent as a child; idiosyncratic to a degree.

I understand Marseilles better and it has always seemed nearer to me
since he was born there and lived there when a boy, and, I much fear me,
was driven away, the scapegrace of excellent and wealthy people; not,
I feel sure, for any offense that touched the essential parts of his
manhood. A gentler, a more upright and harmless creature I never knew in
all my life.

I very well recall when he first arrived in the Kentucky metropolis.
His attire and raiment were faultless. He wore a rose in his coat, he
carried a delicate cane, and a most beautiful woman hung upon his arm.
She was his wife. It was a circumstance connected with this lady which
led to the after intimacy between him and me. She fell dangerously ill.
I had casually met her husband as an all-round man-about-town, and by
this token, seeking sym