"That is easy to understand, Monsieur; the distances which separate us from each other, the insurmountable barriers which in Paris are raised between us, exist no longer here. We are two men, face to face in the desert, one as important as the other, and, I hasten to add, two fellow countrymen, that is to say, two friends. Naturally, we ought to make common cause in everything, to interest ourselves in each other, and love one another, as a protest of dislike of the strangers in the midst of whom fate has cast us, and who are, and ought to be, our natural enemies." "Perhaps you are right; but I shall be happy, if you please, to hear your history." "This history is very simple, Monsieur; in a few words I will relate it to you; only I much doubt whether it will interest you." "Tell it me, my young friend." "Well, then, my name, you know, is Émile Gagnepain--a plebeian name it is, is it not?" "The name is of little consequence." "Without doubt. In 1792, when the country was in danger, my father, a poor devil of a first clerk to a procureur, who had been married but a few years, abandoned his wife and child--the latter aged seven or eight years--to engage himself as a volunteer, and fly to the defence of the Republic. When my father announced to his wife the determination he had taken, she answered him with quite a Spartan brevity--" "'Go and defend your country; it ought to rank before your family,' said my mother." "My father left; our poor hearth, already very miserable, became still more so; happily, I had the good fortune of being recommended to David, in whose studio I entered. My mother could thus, by dint of economy, wait for better times. However, years passed away, my father did not return; we seldom received news of him; we learnt that he had been nominated a captain in the Twenty-fifth demi-brigade." "Sometimes, though rarely, a little aid in money reached my mother. At the camp of Boulogne my father refused the cross of the Legion of Honour, under pretext that the Republic had no distinctions to give to those of her children who were doing their duty." "Some months later he fell, pierced by the ball of Austerlitz, in the midst of an Austrian square that he had penetrated at the head of his company, crying, 'Vive la République!'" "The emperor did not entertain any rancour against a soldier of '92. He gave a pension of eight hundred francs to his widow; that was very well, but not enough to live upon. Happily, I had grown up, and was now in a position to do something in aid of my mother. Thanks to the all-powerful protection of my master, although still very young, I gained enough money, not only to support myself comfortably, but also to give my mother a little of that comfort of which she had so much need." "It was then, I don't know for what reason, that I was seized with a desire to travel in America, in order to study that scenery of which, as people say, we have only counterfeits, more or less successful."