In the genial French fashion of those times we soon got on terms of intimacy with these and other neighbors, and saw much of each other at all times of the day. My tall and beautiful young mother (la belle Madame Pasquier, as she was gallantly called) was an Englishwoman who had been born and partly brought up in Paris. My gay and jovial father (le beau Pasquier, for he was also tall and comely to the eye) was a Frenchman, although an English subject, who had been born and partly brought up in London; for he was the child of emigres from France during the Reign of Terror. [Illustration] "When in death I shall calm recline, Oh take my heart to my mistress dear! Tell her it lived upon smiles and wine Of the brightest hue while it lingered here!" He was gifted with a magnificent, a phenomenal voice--a barytone and tenor rolled into one; a marvel of richness, sweetness, flexibility, and power--and had intended to sing at the opera; indeed, he had studied for three years at the Paris Conservatoire to that end; and there he had carried all before him, and given rise to the highest hopes. But his family, who were Catholics of the blackest and Legitimists of the whitest dye--and as poor as church rats had objected to such a godless and derogatory career; so the world lost a great singer, and the great singer a mine of wealth and fame. However, he had just enough to live upon, and had married a wife (a heretic!) who had just about as much, or as little; and he spent his time, and both his money and hers, in scientific inventions--to little purpose, for well as he had learned how to sing, he had not been to any conservatoire where they teach one how to invent. So that, as he waited "for his ship to come home," he sang only to amuse his wife, as they say the nightingale does; and to ease himself of superfluous energy, and to charm the servants, and le Pere et la Mere Francois, and the five followers of Napoleon, and all and everybody who cared to listen, and last and least (and most!), myself. For this great neglected gift of his, on which he set so little store, was already to me the most beautiful and mysterious thing in the world; and next to this, my mother's sweet playing on the harp and piano, for she was an admirable musician. It was her custom to play at night, leaving the door of my bedroom ajar, and also the drawing-room door, so that I could hear her till I fell asleep. Sometimes, when my father was at home, the spirit would move him to hum or sing the airs she played, as he paced up and down the room on the track of a new invention. And though he sang and hummed "pian-piano," the sweet, searching, manly tones seemed to fill all space. The hushed house became a sounding-board, the harp a mere subservient tinkle, and my small, excitable frame would thrill and vibrate under the waves of my unconscious father's voice; and oh, the charming airs he sang!