My father was a great hunter, but always went alone; he was passionately fond of horses and extended agriculture. These occupations, as well as my education, which he personally superintended, until he gave me a tutor, and sent me to see the world, filled up his whole leisure. Then his fortune was considerable, and as he never would consent to have an intendant, he, with the assistance of my mother, whose sense of order was extremely keen, attended to the administration of his property himself; the rest of his time was taken up with reading, scientific experiments, and long, solitary walks. When I started for that fatal voyage, during which I was to lose my mother, she had seen in a dream a warning of her death, and had told me about it; but we hid it from my father, not because she feared him, but because, having always had a certain awe of his superiority, she dreaded his severe sarcasm, which never spared any poetical, exaggerated, or romantic sentiment. I was thus prevented from taking a last farewell of my mother. I say nothing of my grief; she was the only person in the world to whom I had ever dared to tell everything freely and confidentially. My aunt and her daughter Hélène had come to reside at Serval after my mother's death, almost in spite of my father, whose habitual need of solitude and silence seemed to become stronger as he became more and more feeble. I led in those days a most distressing and harrowing life. Every morning my father would send for me to come to his bedside; his _valet de chambre_ would then bring him the great strong box, where were kept the books containing the administration of our property, and day by day he would explain to me the state of affairs with an icy clearness which chilled me to the heart. One day he made me read aloud his will, with the same appearance of insensibility. My voice was choked with the effort I made to suppress my sobbing; he did not even seem to notice it. He would generally end this sort of initiation into the future management of the fortune he meant to leave me by some counsels he would give me in a brief manner, a long silence following each sentence. These conversations revealed the most direct and exact judgment, and the deepest and truest knowledge of the miseries, or, as he said, the moral necessities of the human race, for a very striking trait of my father's character was the calm and disinterested manner with which he could discuss the inherent weaknesses of our species. According to his idea, we were obliged to admit that certain facts, certain low and selfish instincts, from which even noble minds could not escape, were the consequences of our moral organisation. He thought it as idle to hide or deny this defect as it would be to blame men for being attainted by it. Thus, if any one ever asked of him a favour, he would generally consider that he would in return only receive ingratitude; nevertheless, he would render the service with the most perfect benevolence.