It was traveling on the railroad from Orleans to Amboise, that I first met Monsieur and Madame Faye, who were returning from Paris to Tours. There was a little battle, just as the train was starting, in consequence of late comers. The only wonder is how any Frenchman manages ever to be ready, considering the immense amount of talk and leave-taking which seem a part of their existence--and I, amongst others, put out my hand to help in an apparently infirm man, whose agitation seemed to prevent him from knowing where to take his seat. I pointed to that next to me, pulling his coat to force him into it, that we might not all be inconvenienced by his lingering. He bowed and smiled, and continued to talk to a female who followed him; and who began to stow away numerous baskets and bundles which she was tightly embracing, thanking us, all the time, for our politeness to her husband. In a few seconds they were stashed, and we then had leisure to remark the appearance of the new travelers. The gentleman was rather past middle age, good-looking, neatly dressed. He had a cheerful, pleasant countenance and soft, mild eyes, which he directed toward those to whom he spoke, although we afterward found they possessed no speculation. The lady was any thing but tidy in her style; indeed, so much the reverse as to be surprising in a Frenchwoman; but her story, when it was told me at our next meeting at Tours, explained the peculiarities which made her at first an object of somewhat disrespectful observation. We soon became good friends. Monsieur Faye was blind, and had been so from childhood. His cousin, Mathurine, had _proposed for him_ when they were both about five-and-twenty, and had, from that time, devoted her whole life to attend on him. “I should not,” she said, “have asked him; but that my brother, who required my services because of his lameness, determined just then to marry; and, therefore, as I had a substitute with him, and poor dear Hector here was too modest to ask me, what else was to be done?” I found, on further acquaintance, that Hector was a remarkable personage, in his way: a bit of a musician, a philosopher, an antiquary, and a great reader of, or rather listener to, history; for it was his little, lively, untiring wife, who read to him from morning till night; and sometimes, when he could not sleep, from night till morning.