(let me repeat the illustration) to the deer that forsakes its comrade.
The poor thing knows no better. And what a graceful beautiful thing this
was!

The fascination--I can give it no other name--which Margrave exercised,
was not confined to me; it was universal,--old, young, high, low, man,
woman, child, all felt it. Never in Low Town had stranger, even the most
distinguished by fame, met with a reception so cordial, so flattering.
His frank confession that he was a natural son, far from being to his
injury, served to interest people more in him, and to prevent all those
inquiries in regard to his connections and antecedents which would
otherwise have been afloat. To be sure, he was evidently rich,--at least
he had plenty of money. He lived in the best rooms in the principal
hotel; was very hospitable; entertained the families with whom he had
grown intimate; made them bring their children,--music and dancing after
dinner. Among the houses in which he had established familiar
acquaintance was that of the mayor of the town, who had bought Dr. Lloyd's
collection of subjects in natural history. To that collection the mayor
had added largely by a very recent purchase. He had arranged these
various specimens, which his last acquisitions had enriched by the
interesting carcasses of an elephant and a hippopotamus, in a large wooden
building contiguous to his dwelling, which had been constructed by a
former proprietor (a retired fox-hunter) as a riding-house; and being a
man who much affected the diffusion of knowledge, he proposed to open this
museum to the admiration of the general public, and, at his death, to
bequeath it to the Athenaeum or Literary Institute of his native town.
Margrave, seconded by the influence of the mayor's daughters, had scarcely
been three days at L---- before he had persuaded this excellent and
public-spirited functionary to inaugurate the opening of his museum by the
popular ceremony of a ball. A temporary corridor should unite the