Baron Henri Arnous de Reviere was the eldest son of Baron William Arnous de Reviere, Counsellor-general of the Department of the Loire Inferior. The title is hereditary; the family estate is situated at Varades; and the ancestral records are kept in the archives of the ancient city of Rennes in Brittany. The Baron first cropped up in this country about the outbreak of the rebellion, when people here and in England were in great excitement over the steps taken by the general government in securing the arrest of Messrs. Mason and Slidell. He had apparently made one of the elder Dumas' heroes his exalted ideal, for at the period we speak of he had set the fashionable world of Gotham agog by making a romantic conquest of a Mobile belle, who, after becoming thoroughly infatuated with him, eloped to a prominent watering-place. The interference of her friends prevented the consummation of a wedding; but his escapade formed the subject of a book, afterwards dramatized, and acted at Wallack's Theatre. Subsequently the Baron married Miss Blount, the daughter of a rich Southern lawyer. When he returned to Paris, his fame had preceded him. Society in the gay capital under the empire was of the kind to appreciate his exploits and to exalt him into a sort of rivalship of Monte Cristo. He assiduously attended the theaters and salons, receiving homage everywhere-even from the emperor himself. Finally he mounted the rostrum, and his lectures on _L'Amour_ were the talk of the gay city. Among those who had rushed to listen to the Baron's impassioned eloquence was Helene Cecille Stille, now the proprietress of the handsomest hotel on the Rue Mont-martre. It need scarcely be premised that the wandering and appreciative eyes of the lecturer had rested on the beautiful American, as she sat before him in an attitude expressive of dormant passion, tinged with an imperious coquetry which was one of the most alluring of her charms. The Hotel Montmartre was then the fashionable resort of Louis Napoleon's dissolute nobility, and the Baron de Reviere soon found himself a worshiper in the luxurious retreat. He was not a man who courted by halves. He fell madly in love with the voluptuous Helene, and yielding to an irresistible penchant, the soiled beauty threw herself and her accumulated francs into his arms.