TIE STUDY OF NATURE. 81 
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 ,j¥i\ 
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- 
f 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. 
