The château in which my eyes first opened to the light was little inferior in size to the castle of Lourdes, and infinitely too large for the small establishment of servants and retainers which my father's reduced finances enabled him to maintain. Our diminished household looked, within its enormous walls, like the shrunken form of some careful old miser, insinuated into the wide and hanging garments of his youth; and yet my excellent parent fondly insisted upon as much pomp and ceremony as his own father had kept up with a hundred and fifty retainers waiting in his hall. Still the trumpet sounded at the hour of dinner, though the weak lungs of the broken-winded old _maître d'hôtel_ produced but a cacophonous sound from the hollow brass: still all the servants, who amounted to five, including the gardener, the shepherd, and the cook, were drawn up at the foot of the staircase, in unstarched ruffs and tarnished liveries of green and gold, while my father, with slow and solemn pace, handed down to dinner Madame la Comtesse; still would he talk of his vassals, and his seigneurial rights, though his domain scarce covered five hundred acres of wood and mountain, and vassals, God knows, he had but few. However, the banners still hung in the hall; and it was impossible to gaze upon the walls, the pinnacles, the towers, and the battlements of the old castle, without attaching the idea of power and influence to the lord of such a hold; so that it was not extraordinary he himself should, in some particulars forget the decay of his house, and fancy himself as great as his ancestors. A thousand excellent qualities of the heart covered any little foibles in my father's character. He was liberal to a fault; kind, with that minute and discriminating benevolence which weighs every word ere it be spoken, lest it should hurt the feelings of another; brave, to that degree that scarcely believes in fear, yet at the same time so humane, that his sympathy with others often proved the torture of his own heart; but---- Oh! that in this world there should still be a _but_, to qualify everything that is good and excellent!--but, still he had one fault that served greatly to counteract all the high qualities which he possessed. He was invincibly lazy in mind. He could endure nothing that gave him trouble; and, though the natural quickness of his disposition would lead him to purpose a thousand great undertakings, yet long ere the time came for executing them, various little obstacles and impediments had gradually worn down his resolution; or else the trouble of thinking about one thing for long was too much for him, and the enterprise dropped by its own weight. Had fortune brought him great opportunities, no one would have seized them more willingly, or used them to better or to nobler purposes; but fortune was to seek--and he did nothing.