We were in the steamboat that plies between Vevay and Geneva when this conversation occurred, and as there could not be a more convenient opportunity of hearing the narration, we retired from the crowd of travellers that thronged the deck, and Madame de G. began as follows. "My husband's father, the elder Monsieur Geirsteche, was acquainted with two young men named Zwengler. He was at school and at college with them, and their intimacy continued after their education was finished. When one was fourteen and the other ten, they had the misfortune to lose both their parents by an accident. They were crossing the Alps, when by the fall of an avalanche their carriage was overturned down a precipice, and they and their servants perished. "The Zwenglers were people of good family but small fortune; and as they had always lived fully up to what they had, their property, when it came to be divided between their four children, for they had two daughters besides the sons I have named, afforded but an inadequate portion to each; but this misfortune was mitigated by their rich relations--a wealthy uncle adopted the boys, and an equally wealthy aunt took the girls. This was but just, for they had both been enriched by what ought to have been the inheritance of the other sister, the mother of these children, who, having married Monsieur Zwengler contrary to the wishes of her parents, was cut off with a shilling. This uncle and aunt had never married, for their father objected to every match that was proposed, as not sufficiently advantageous; whilst the brother and sister, taking warning by the fate of Madame Zwengler, preferred living single to the risk of incurring the same penalty. The daughters having good fortunes married early, and I believe did well enough; it is on the history of the sons that my story turns. "As I mentioned, they were at the same school with my husband's father when the catastrophe happened to their parents, and he remembered afterwards the different manner in which the news had affected them; Alfred's grief was apparently stormy and violent; that of the other was less demonstrative, but more genuine. Alfred, in short, was secretly elated at the independence he expected would be the consequence of this sudden bereavement; and he lost no time in assuming over Louis the importance and authority of an elder brother. Louis was an enthusiastic, warm-hearted, and imaginative child, too young to appreciate his loss in a worldly point of view, but mourning his parents--especially his mother--sincerely.