to me, and he was drunk, and he cried, sir; and I was
drunk, and I cried too!"

I had known The Frenchman now ten or a dozen years. That he came
from Marseilles, that he had served on the Confederate side in the
Trans-Mississippi, that he possessed an annuity, that he must have been
well-born and reared, that he was simple, yet canny, and in his money
dealings scrupulously honest--was all I could be sure of. What had he
done to be ashamed about or wish to conceal? In what was he a black
sheep, for that he had been one seemed certain? Had the beautiful woman,
his wife--a tireless church and charity worker, who lived the life of a
recluse and a saint--had she reclaimed him from his former self? I knew
that she had been the immediate occasion of his turning over a new leaf.
But before her time what had he been, what had he done?

Late one night, when the rain was falling and the streets were empty, I
entered The Brunswick. It was empty too. In the farthest corner of the
little dining room The Major, his face buried in his hands, laid upon
the table in front of him, sat silently weeping. He did not observe
my entrance and I seated myself on the opposite side of the table.
Presently he looked up, and seeing me, without a word passed me a letter
which, all blistered with tears, had brought him to this distressful
state. It was a formal French burial summons, with its long list of
family names--his among the rest--the envelope, addressed in a lady's
hand--his sister's, the wife of a nobleman in high military command--the
postmark "Lyon." Uncle Celestin was dead.

Thereafter The Frenchman told me much which I may not recall and must
not repeat; for, included in that funeral list were some of the best
names in France, Uncle Celestin himself not the least of them.

At last he died, and as mysteriously as he had come his body was taken
away, nobody knew when, nobody where, and with it went the beautiful
woman, his wife, of whom from that day to this I have never heard a
word.

Chapter the Fifteenth

Still the Gay Capital of France--Its Environs--Walewska and De
Morny--Thackeray in Paris--A _Pension_ Adventure

I

Each of the generations thinks itself commonplace. Familiarity breeds
equally indifference and contempt. Yet no age of the world has witnessed
so much of the drama of life--of the romantic and picturesque--as the
age we live in. The years betwixt Agincourt and Waterloo were not more
delightf