The idea of death had never ceased to occupy my mind and excite my curiosity since I had been told that my father was dead; and I instantly cried out, "Is he dead? Oh, let me look at him--let me look at him!" The sound of my childish voice uttering such an exclamation caught the attention of those around, and whether they believed that I might be related to the dead person, or were actuated merely by a sudden impulse, I cannot tell, but they made way instantly, and letting me into the circle, stood round with a part of their attention now withdrawn from the former object of their contemplations to myself, as I stood habited in deep mourning, gazing upon the body, with all the simplicity, but more than the feelings, of childhood. The dead man was dressed like a respectable tradesman, and had, I suppose, fallen down in a fit of apoplexy; but there he lay with his jaw dropping upon his throat, his glassy eyes wide open, and his limbs stretched out in all the rigidity of death. People may say what they please on the similarity of sleep and death, but, even to a child, the awful difference of the two was so conspicuous, that it seemed to freeze the blood in my young heart, and I never asked what death is again. My brother was destined for the navy, and my father had fancied that his family interest was sufficiently good to obtain for me the post of _attaché_ to some embassy, by which means he hoped that I might be enabled to make my way in the diplomatic world. Four hundred a-year, three on my reaching one-and-twenty, and one hundred in reversion, after my mother's death, he had calculated would be sufficient to procure me the proper education for that mode of life to which I was destined, and to support me during the toils and privations of the probationary state of unpaid _attachéship_. The rest of his fortune, sooner or later, was willed to my brother; and, joined to my mother in our guardianship and the execution of his will, was his banker and old friend, Mr. Somers, of whom I shall have to speak much more hereafter. Within a year after my father's death my brother went to sea, and I was sent to school, in order to gain so much Latin and Greek as are needful to an _attaché_, but with especial injunctions to my master to bestow far more attention upon the living than upon the dead languages. I was at this time a gay and lively boy, full of fun, daring, and impudence, but with what neither I nor any one else suspected, namely, a wild and ungovernable imagination, which was constantly leading me into scrapes during my youth, and which has been, by turns, my bane and my consolation since I reached the days of manhood. The French master at the school was an emigrant and a gentleman, both by birth and habits; and as the instructions which he had to bestow upon me were more extended than those which he was called on to give the rest of the boys, it very naturally happened, that a closer intimacy and regard took place between us than existed