“O, dear! not till I am grown up,” I would complain. “That is so long to wait.” Yet that came to be a settled hope, a moving purpose, in my life—that I should sometime meet my Uncle Florimond in person. I used to indulge my imagination in long, delicious day-dreams, of which our meeting was the subject, anticipating how he would receive me, and what we should say and do. I used to try honestly to be a good boy, so that he would take pleasure in recognizing me as his nephew. My grandmother's assertion to the effect that I looked like him filled my heart with gladness, though, strive as I might, I could not see the resemblance for myself. And if she never tired of talking to me about him, I never tired of listening, either. Indeed, to all the story-books in our library I preferred her anecdotes of Uncle Florimond.
Once a month regularly my grandmother wrote him a long letter; and once a month regularly a long letter arrived from him for her—the reception of which marked a great day in our placid, uneventful calendar. It was my duty to go to the post-office every afternoon, to fetch the mail. When I got an envelope addressed in his handwriting, and bearing the French postage-stamp—oh! didn't I hurry home! I couldn't seem to run fast enough, I was so impatient to deliver it to her, and to hear her read it aloud. Yet the contents of Uncle Florimond's epistles were seldom very exciting; and I dare say, if I should copy one of them here, you would pronounce it quite dull and prosy. He always began, “Ma sour bien-aimee”—My well-beloved sister. Then generally he went on to give an account of his goings and his comings since his last—naming the people whom he had met, the houses at which he had dined, the plays he had witnessed, the books he had read—and to inquire tenderly touching his sister's health, and to bid her kiss his little nephew Gregory for him. He invariably wound up, “Dieu te garde, ma sour cherie”—God keep thee, my dearest sister.—“Thy affectionate brother, de la Bourbonnaye.” That was his signature—de la Bourbonnaye, written uphill, with a big flourish underneath it—never Florimond. My grandmother explained to me that in this particular—signing his family name without his given one—he but followed a custom prevalent among French noblemen. Well, as I was saying, his letters for the most part were quite unexciting; yet, nevertheless, I listened to them with rapt attention, reluctant to lose a single word. This was for the good and sufficient reason that they came from him—from my Uncle Florimond—from my hero, the Marquis de la Bourbonnaye. And after my grandmother had finished reading one of them, I would ask, “May I look at it, please?” To hold it between my fingers, and gaze upon it, exerted a vague, delightful fascination over me. To think that his own hand had touched this paper, had shaped these characters, less than a fortnight ago! My Uncle Florimond's very hand! It was wonderful!
I was born on the first of March, 1860; so that on the first of March, 1870, I became ten years of age. On the morning of that day, after breakfast, my grandmother called me to her room.
“Thou shalt have a holiday to-day,” she said; “no study, no lessons. But first, stay.”
She unlocked the lowest drawer of the big old-fashioned bureau-desk at which she used to write, and took from it something long and slender, wrapped up in chamois-skin. Then she undid and peeled off the chamois-skin wrapper, and showed me—what do you suppose? A beautiful golden-hilted sword, incased in a golden scabbard!
“Isn't it pretty?” she asked.
“Oh! lovely, superb,” I answered, all admiration and curiosity.
“Guess a little, mon petit, whom it belonged to?” she went on.
“To—oh! to my Uncle Florimond—I am sure,” I exclaimed.
“Right. To thy Uncle Florimond. It was presented to him by the king, by King Louis XVIII.”