EMEDE AU MELANCOLIQUE
C'EST LA MUSIQUE
ET LA BEAUTE'"
]

My mother was anxious that I should go to one of the universities,
Oxford or Cambridge; but this my father could not afford. She had a
great dislike to business--and so had I; from different motives, I
fancy. I had the wish to become a man of science--a passion that had
been fired by M. Dumollard, whose special chemistry class at the Pension
Brossard, with its attractive experiments, had been of the deepest
interest to me. I have not described it because Barty did not come in.

Fortunately for my desire, my good father had great sympathy with me
in this; so I was entered as a student at the Laboratory of
Chemistry at University College, close by--in October, 1851--and
studied there for two years, instead of going at once into my
father's business in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury, which would have
pleased him even more.

At about the same time Barty was presented with a commission in the
Second Battalion of the Grenadier Guards, and joined immediately.

Nothing could have been more widely apart than the lives we led, or
the society we severally frequented.

I lived at home with my people; he in rooms on a second floor in St.
James's Street; he had a semi-grand piano, and luxurious furniture,
and bookcases already well filled, and nicely colored lithograph
engravings on the walls--beautiful female faces--the gift of Lady
Archibald, who had superintended Barty's installation with kindly
maternal interest, but little appreciation of high art. There were
also foils, boxing-gloves, dumbbells, and Indian clubs; and many
weapons, ancient and modern, belonging more especially to his own
martial profession. They were most enviable quarters. But he often
came to see us in Brunswick Square, and dined with us once or twice
a week, and was made much of--even by my father, who thoroughly
disapproved of everything about him except his own genial and
agreeable self, which hadn't altered in the least.

My father was much away--in Paris and Dijon--and Barty made rain and
fine weather in our dull abode, to use a French expression--_il y
faisait la pluie et le beau temps_. That is, it rained there when he
was away, and he brought the fine weather with him; and we spoke
French all round.

The greatest pleasure I could have was to breakfast with Barty in
St. James's Street on Sunday mornings, when he was not serving his
Queen and country--either alone with