evils that destroy young men in Paris. We will be two friends
henceforth. In a year's time you will be a doctor of law. Not without
some hardship and privations you have acquired the sound knowledge and
the love of, and application to, work that is indispensable to public
men. You must learn to know me, Raphael. I do not want to make either
an advocate or a notary of you, but a statesman, who shall be the
pride of our poor house. . . . Good-night,' he added.

"From that day my father took me fully into confidence. I was an only
son; and ten years before, I had lost my mother. In time past my
father, the head of a historic family remembered even now in Auvergne,
had come to Paris to fight against his evil star, dissatisfied at the
prospect of tilling the soil, with his useless sword by his side. He
was endowed with the shrewdness that gives the men of the south of
France a certain ascendency when energy goes with it. Almost unaided,
he made a position for himself near the fountain of power. The
revolution brought a reverse of fortune, but he had managed to marry
an heiress of good family, and, in the time of the Empire, appeared to
be on the point of restoring to our house its ancient splendor.

"The Restoration, while it brought back considerable property to my
mother, was my father's ruin. He had formerly purchased several
estates abroad, conferred by the Emperor on his generals; and now for
ten years he struggled with liquidators, diplomatists, and Prussian
and Bavarian courts of law, over the disputed possession of these
unfortunate endowments. My father plunged me into the intricate
labyrinths of law proceedings on which our future depended. We might
be compelled to return the rents, as well as the proceeds arising from
sales of timber made during the years 1814 to 1817; in that case my
mother's property would have barely saved our credit. So it fell out