“Well, Piron, as I have told you, after the peace was made in 1815, I had command of a brig, and took a cruise on the coast of Brazil. After that I was appointed to a thirty-six gun frigate––the old ‘Blazer’––and went, for three years, to the East Indies, and round home by the Pacific. When we were paid off I made a tour in Europe with that boy’s father, Dr. Darcantel, and––”
“But you promised to tell me, Cleveland, something about him.”
“Nothing easier; and, if we have half an hour before we get to Escondido, I will give you all I know, in a general way, of his history. Yes? Well, then, Darcantel is descended from one of the oldest and best Creole families in our State of Louisiana, and the plantations of my family and his father were contiguous to each other on the Mississippi, some leagues up the coast above New Orleans. We had the same tutor when we were children, and we grew up from infancy to boyhood together. He was passionate and ungovernable even as a child; but as he was the heir to a large estate, and his father dead, his weak mother humored and allowed no one to curb him. I myself, one of a numerous family, was put in the navy, and I went away on cruise after cruise, and did not get home again to the old plantation for full seven years. I was a man then, had seen some active service, and I held a commission as a lieutenant in the navy.
“In the mean while, Paul Darcantel, who had taken, at the time I left, a strong fancy for medicine and surgery, had been sent to France to begin his studies. How he applied himself we do not know; but with a large letter of credit he spent a great deal of money; and we heard that, with great talents and wonderful skill in his profession, he was yet unfitted for close application, and plunged madly into the vortex of dissipation around him. I heard, too––or at least my brothers told me––that his extravagances had seriously impaired his 237 fortune, and that his duels had been so numerous and desperate as to make his name dreaded even in Paris. On one occasion, at a café, he had cut a bullying hussar’s head clean off with his own sabre for knocking a woman down; and in another duel, where he had detected a French count cheating him at cards, he shot his nose off for a bet. With this unenviable reputation, and at the urgent solicitations of his agent, after years of absence he returned to his ancestral home. We met as of old––it was Paul and Henry––and though still the same restive, hot-headed spirit as he had ever been, he yet always listened patiently to what I said, and I could, in a manner, control him. He paid very little attention to his property, however, and when he did go to the city to consult with his factor or trustee, he got into some wild frolic, duel, and scrape, and came back worn out with fatigue and dissipation. He was a fine, stern-looking youth in those days, with great muscular power, which, even with the endurance put upon it by gaming and drinking, seemed not to be lessened.
“After one of these visits to New Orleans, where his long-forbearing agents had at last awakened him to a bitter sense of his delinquencies, and when mortgage upon mortgage were laid with all their shocking truth before him, he returned and came to me. With all his vices and faults, he was truthful and generous. He told me all, and how he would try to do better, and soothe the declining years of his too indulgent mother.
“I always had great faith in the companion almost of my cradle, and I loved him, I think, better than my own brothers. Well, he spread all his affairs before me, and in my little den of an outhouse on the plantation we both went systematically over the papers. We were two days and nights at the business; and when, at last, I showed him that he would still, with a little prudent economy, have a fair income, and eventually, perhaps, redeem his hereditary property, he burst out in a wild yell of delight, and hugged me in his arms. When he had put away the papers, I said,
“‘Paul, you know I am engaged to be married, and I have not seen my sweetheart for two whole days; she has a sister, too, prettier than my Fifine, whom you have never seen since we were boys together. Come, will you go with me? We can pull ourselves across the river.’
“He hesitated; and it would have been, perhaps, better had he refused to accompany me, for dreadful misery came of it.”
The commodore gave a deep sigh, and touched his horse with the spur.
“I don’t know, though, Piron; there is a fate marked out for us all, and we should not exclaim against the decrees of Providence. Paul went with me across the river. There, on the bank, was a little bower of an old French-built stone house, where dwelt the last 238 of a line of French nobility who dated back to the days of Charlemagne. It was an impoverished family, consisting of a reckless brother and two sisters, who, with a few acres of sugar-cane and some old faithful servants, managed to make both ends meet, and to support the establishment in a certain air of elegance and comfort to which they had been accustomed. They were of a proud and haughty race––the brother a disdainful and imperious gentleman, smarting and brooding over the reverses of his family, and rarely visiting his neighbors. His sisters––and they were twins––were trustful, happy girls, and Josephine had been my childish love.”