I have said that I was between twelve and thirteen years old when Helen Arnault first became an inmate of the same dwelling. Two years rapidly passed by, and not long after I had reached the age of fourteen, I was sent to the college of Pau, where three years and a half more glided away in unperturbed tranquillity--calm--quiet--slow; but what a change had taken place in all my thoughts and feelings by the time they had passed! I was farther advanced both in stature, in form, and ideas, than most youths of my age. Childhood was gone--manhood was at hand. I left the placid, innocent bowers of infancy, with their cool and passionless shades; and I stood with my footstep on the threshold of man's busy and tumultuous theatre, ready to plunge into the arena and struggle with the rest. My heart full of strong and ardent passions, my imagination vivid and uncontrolled, with some knowledge gained from books, and some shrewd sense of my own, but with little self-government, and no experience, I set out from Pau, to return to my paternal mansion; and as from that day I may date the commencement of a new existence, I will pause, and begin my manhood with a chapter to itself. CHAPTER IV. I was now eighteen; slim, tall, and vigorous, inheriting some portion both of my father's and of my mother's personal beauty, and superadding all those graces which are peculiarly the property of youth; the flowers which partial nature bestows upon the spring of life, and which are rarely compensated by the fruits of manhood's summer. I know not why I should refrain from saying I was handsome. Long before any one reads these lines, that which was so, will be dust and ashes--a thing that creatures composed of the same sordid materials, cemented by the same fragile medium of life, will turn from with insect disgust. With this consciousness before me, I will venture, then, to say, that I _was_ handsome:--if ever I was personally vain, such a folly is amongst those that have left me.