Why have we never heard from you since the beginning of 1851? Alas! I fear some terrible misfortune has overtaken you, and overwhelmed your whole family. Many times have I written during that long period, and prayed, oh! so promptly, that God would take you, and yours, in His holy keeping. And then our dear Lucile! Ah! what a life must be in store for her, in that wild and distant land! Beg of her to return to France; and do not fail, also, to come yourself. We have a new Emperor, as you must long since have learned, in the person of Louis Bonaparte, nephew of the great Napoleon. Your reactionist principles against Cavaignac and his colleagues, can be of no disservice to you at present. Napoleon is lenient. He has even recalled Louis Blanc. Come, and apply for restitution of the old estates; come, and be a protector of my seven orphans, now, alas! suffering even for the common necessaries of life. Need a fond sister say more to her only living brother? Thine, as in childhood, ANNETTE. "Misfortunes pour like a pitiless winter storm upon my devoted head," thought Lucile, as she replaced the letter in its envelope. "Parents dead; aunt broken-hearted; cousins starving, and I not able to afford relief. I cannot even moisten their sorrows with a tear. I would weep, but rebellion against fate rises in my soul, and dries up the fountain of tears. Had Heaven made me a man it would not have been thus. I have something here," she exclaimed, rising from her seat and placing her hand upon her forehead, "that tells me I could do and dare, and endure." Her further soliloquy was here interrupted by a distinct rap at her door, and on pronouncing the word "enter," Pollexfen, for the first time since she became a member of his family, strode heavily into her chamber. Lucile did not scream, or protest, or manifest either surprise or displeasure at this unwonted and uninvited visit. She politely pointed to a seat, and the photographer, without apology or hesitation, seized the chair, and moving it so closely to her own that they came in contact, seated himself without uttering a syllable. Then, drawing a document from his breast pocket, which was folded formally, and sealed with two seals, but subscribed only with one name, he proceeded to read it from beginning to end, in a slow, distinct, and unfaltering tone. I have the document before me, as I write, and I here insert a full and correct copy. It bore date just one month subsequent to the time of the interview, and was intended, doubtless, to afford his pupil full opportunity for consultation before requesting her signature: |=This Indenture=|, Made this nineteenth day of November, A. D. 1853, by John Pollexfen, photographer, of the first part, and Lucile Marmont, artiste, of the second part, both of the city of San Francisco, and State of California, WITNESSETH: