My gay and jovial father (le beau Pasquier, for he was also tall and
comely to the eye) was a Frenchman, although an English subject, who had
been born and partly brought up in London; for he was the child of
emigres from France during the Reign of Terror.

[Illustration]

"When in death I shall calm recline,
Oh take my heart to my mistress dear!
Tell her it lived upon smiles and wine
Of the brightest hue while it lingered here!"

He was gifted with a magnificent, a phenomenal voice--a barytone and
tenor rolled into one; a marvel of richness, sweetness, flexibility, and
power--and had intended to sing at the opera; indeed, he had studied for
three years at the Paris Conservatoire to that end; and there he had
carried all before him, and given rise to the highest hopes. But his
family, who were Catholics of the blackest and Legitimists of the
whitest dye--and as poor as church rats had objected to such a godless
and derogatory career; so the world lost a great singer, and the great
singer a mine of wealth and fame.

However, he had just enough to live upon, and had married a wife (a
heretic!) who had just about as much, or as little; and he spent his
time, and both his money and hers, in scientific inventions--to little
purpose, for well as he had learned how to sing, he had not been to any
conservatoire where they teach one how to invent.

So that, as he waited "for his ship to come home," he sang only to amuse
his wife, as they say the nightingale does; and to ease himself of