My first recollections refer to the period when I was about seven or eight years old, and to a sweet spot in the far south of France called Blancford, not far from the great city of Bordeaux. The chateau in which I dwelt had belonged for ages to my ancestors, and the little room in one of the turrets which was assigned to me, looked towards the setting sun over manifold beautiful green slopes and wooded banks, with now and then a broken, cliffy bit of yellow ground, that harmonized beautifully and richly with the warm tints of the spring and the autumn, and broke not less pleasantly the thick green of the mid year. Upon those banks, and trees, and slopes, the sunshine seemed to dwell with peculiar fondness; and thither came the bright and smiling showers of spring, and the rich, vision-like lights and shades of autumn. Gay hawking parties, and many a splendid cavalcade from the rich and important town in the neighbourhood, diversified the scenery during the bright part of the year, and towards the winter-time the beasts of the forest and the field used to resume their dwelling in the neighbouring woods, and afford sport and diversion to the inhabitants of the castle. As I have said, that chateau had been for centuries the dwelling-place of my ancestors, ever since, indeed, the arm of Du Guesclin and the wisdom of Charles had expelled the English from the shores of France; but still that chateau was not mine, nor ever likely to be mine; for I was at that time a poor dependant upon the bounty of others, without wealth, rank, station, or fortune of any kind to give hope to my heart or energy to my effort. The lord of that castle, my poor father's first cousin, had taken me out of compassion to his relation, a poor soldier of fortune, who married thoughtlessly and died young; and as he himself, a lover of pleasure--even of license, at the time he took me into his house, thought only of marriage as a remote evil, he treated me at first with so much kindness, that the foolish persons who surrounded us imagined that a time might come when I should be his heir. Nothing, indeed, was farther from his thoughts. He had always determined, and still held the resolution of wedding ultimately, in the hope of seeing his possessions descend to children of his own. The accomplishment of this purpose was hastened by accidental circumstances, which placed it in his power to marry a beautiful and wealthy bride, whom he brought home to the chateau in great pomp, and the festivities which followed her arrival are among the first events which I distinctly remember.