He was the son of an _émigré_ of the old stamp, a self-willed fantastic old man, who carried the sternest rules of obedience into the most trifling domestic affairs, and might have adopted the motto, "L'état, c'est moi." His scheme of government may be inferred from a brief anecdote recounted by the biographer of Gaston. The latter, returning from Paris, appeared at home with two things distasteful to his sire--a beard and a cigar. "Madam," said the father to his wife, the stepmother of Gaston, "it would give me pain to argue with my son, and I could not brook opposition. The cigar I can overlook; but pray tell him that it pleases me not to see one of his age wear a beard like a 'moujik,' and that I shall be obliged to request its sacrifice." Gaston grudgingly obeyed the royal edict, for which he was formally thanked. Some days after the sire spoke again, "Madam, I authorize you to say to my son that he may let his beard grow again. Upon second thoughts I do not find it unbecoming." Compliance followed as before; but the tardy efforts of nature did not satisfy the old count, who gravely decided that "a beard does not become Gaston. Madam, I beg you to tell him once more that he must shave." Gaston, instead of obeying, packed his portmanteau and fled to Paris, and was forthwith disowned by his irate parent. His life in Paris was that of a Bohemian, until the death of his father, in 1845, enabled him to carry out a dear ambition, that of founding a colony in Algiers; but the revolution of 1848 recalled him to France and to a political career. He conducted a newspaper, _La Liberté_, and was twice elected to the Assembly. Beaten in a third candidacy he forsook politics in disgust, and turned his eyes towards California. Paris in 1850 counted as many as twenty Californian societies for organized emigration. Gaston, restless, weary, and yet fired with the longing for some great deed, was almost penniless when, in his thirty-second year, he took a third-class passage for California, along with a dozen compatriots of various ranks.