THE STUDY OF NATURE. 



31 



9 



I 



I 



the servants of the Emperor, of his children, of that 

 accomplished and adored lady who was the charm and 

 happiness of his exile. He undertook to convey her 

 back to France in the perilous return of March 1815. 

 This attraction, had there been no obstacle, would have 

 led him even to St. Helena. As it was, he could not 

 endure the restoration of the Bourbons, and returned to 

 his beloved America. 



" The New World was not ungrateful, and made the 

 happiness of his life. He had resigned every official 

 capacity in order to abandon himself wholly to the more 

 independent career of tuition. He taught in Louisiana. 

 That colonial France, isolated, sundered by the events 

 of her mother-land's history, and mingling so many 

 diverse elements of population, breathes ever the breath 

 of France. Among my father's pupils was an orphan, 

 of English and German extraction. She came to him 

 when very young, to learn the first elements of know- 

 ledge ; she grew under his hands, and loved him more 

 and more ; she found a second family, a second father ; 

 she sympathized with the paternal heart, with a charm 

 of youthful vivacity which our French of the south 

 preserve in their mature age. She had but three 

 faults : wealth, beauty, extreme youth for she was at 

 least thirty years younger than my father ; but neither 

 of them perceived it, and they never reminded them- 

 selves of it. My mother has been inconsolable for my 

 father's death, and has ever since worn mourning. 



" My mother longed to see France, and my father, 

 in his pride of her, was delighted to show to the Old 

 World the brilliant flower he had gathered in the New. 



ffi 



