Without troubling ourselves much about the loss, shortly after we were seen hand in hand, walking down the village in earnest conversation. I went home with him--I shared with him and his amiable daughters a light and early supper of fruit and pastry; and such was the simultaneous affection that sprang up between us--so confiding was it in its nature, and so little worldly, that I had gained the threshold, and was about taking my leave, ere it occurred to him to ask, or myself to say, who I was, and where I resided. From that evening, excepting when employed in my studies, we were almost inseparable. I told him my strange story; and he seemed to love me for it a hundred-fold more. He laid all the nobility, and even the princes of the blood, under contribution, to procure me a father. He came to the conclusion firmly, and at once, that Mrs Cherfeuil was my mother. Oh! this mystery made him superlatively happy. And when he came to the knowledge of my poetical talents, he was really in an ecstasy of delight. He rhymed himself. He gave me subjects--he gave me advice--he gave me emendations and interpolations. He re-youthed himself. In many a sequestered nook in the beautiful vicinity of the village, we have sat, each with his pencil and paper in his hand--now ranting, now conversing--and in his converse the instruction I received was invaluable. He has confirmed me in the doctrine of the innate goodness of human nature. Since the period to which I am alluding, I have seen much of villainy. I have been the victim, as well as the witness of treachery. I have been oftentimes forced to associate with vice in every shape; and yet when in misery, when oppressed, when writhing under tyranny, I have been sometimes tempted to curse my race, the thought of the kind, the good old man, has come over me like a visitation from heaven, and my malediction has been changed into a prayer, if not into a blessing. CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR. A DISASTER BY WATER IS THE FIRST CAUSE OF ALL RALPH'S FUTURE DISASTERS UPON IT--HE GETS WITH HIS TUTOR OUT OF HIS DEPTH, IN LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE; AND FINDS HIMSELF RIVALLED BY THE MAN WITH THE PEG. Of course, Mr R sought and soon gained the friendship of Mrs Cherfeuil and then he commenced operations systematically. Now he would endeavour to take her by surprise--now to overcome by entreaty--and then to entrap by the most complex cross questions. He would be, by turns, tender, gallant, pathetic, insinuating; but all was of no avail--her secret, whatever it was, was firmly secured in her own bosom. With well-acted simplicity she gave my worthy friend the same barren account about me that was at the service of all interrogators.