We all know that successive intermarriages are not favorable to any race. Hence it is not surprising that the family of L’Oriens De L’Ile gradually died out. And the last lineal descendant, Monsieur Hubert De L’Ile, who married his first cousin, had neither son nor daughter to succeed him. The European branch of the house that had remained in France, and had married into other families, continued, on the contrary, to be a handsome and vigorous race. And of such was the father of Monsieur Victoire. But Monsieur Victoire had, as he says, an uncle, the elder brother of his father. This man, Monsieur Henri L’Orient, was socially a bachelor and an oddity, and politically a royalist and a Bourbonist. He had one grand passion, and that was for—islands! or perhaps I should say for the family Island in the Chesapeake, to which he was heir presumptive. During the lifetime of Monsieur and Madame Hubert De L’Ile, he made several voyages to the Chesapeake, and spent many months on the Island. His love of the place was immense, his praise of it extravagant, his compliments to the proprietors as sincere as they were overwhelming. “You are like a king and queen here! you are in your insular domain! Your kingdom is only bounded by the infinite sea!” Thus he became a great favorite with the childless old people, who would laughingly reply: “Ah, well! if it is so, if we are a king and queen, then you are the prince and the heir of the kingdom.” And at their death they left a will bequeathing the Island to Monsieur Henri L’Orient, and in case the latter should die without children, to Monsieur Victoire L’Orient and his heirs forever. Monsieur Henri L’Orient was sixty years old when he “came to his kingdom.” It was not likely that he would take a wife and become the father of sons and daughters at that age. So he invited his younger brother, with his family, to accompany him to his insular domain. But Madame, his sister-in-law, who was at that time young, pretty, fashionable and extravagant, preferred the saloons of Paris to the loveliest Island in the world. And so Monsieur Hubert took leave of his relatives, and departed alone for his “kingdom.” And years passed, during which the old man was too much attached to his Island, and his relatives in Paris too much devoted to pleasure, to permit an exchange of visits. But fifteen years after the separation, Madame was a widow without youth, beauty or riches. And her good brother-in-law wrote, proposing that she should come and bring her son and take up her residence with him. But oh, horror! Madame could not think of such a thing! She infinitely preferred to trust to her own resources in Paris, rather than to go out to live among “mulattos and mud turtles on his Island in the Bay.” And with the help of friends, Madame opened her Pensionnat des Demoiselles.