"We were very sober. There were two bottles on the table, one empty and the other nearly full. I then told you that though I had only just returned to France after an absence of ten years, I was compelled to leave at a moment's notice, and to leave without raising any suspicion. I wanted to depart without anyone being able to obtain the slightest clue; you remember," he added. "I do, and I told you that I would run the blockade that very night, if the weather turned out as bad as I expected. Did I keep my promise?" "With all the loyalty of your honest heart. I also told you I intended remaining in America." "It is to that madcap resolution I object," said the captain emphatically. "Why not stay with me? You are an excellent sailor--you shall be my chief officer." "No, my friend. I can accept nothing which can ever tempt me to return to France," he answered. "How you suffer!" sighed his friend. "Horribly. Come, my friend, as we shall part for ever tomorrow, I will tell you my history." "Not if it makes you suffer." "I will be brief. Sad as my story is, it is not very long." "Go on," replied Captain Durand, filling up two more glasses of rum, and lighting a fresh cigar for himself. "I will not sermonise, but begin at the beginning. I was born in Paris, but might be English, German, or even Russian, for all I know. I am simply aware that my birthplace was Paris, in the house of a doctor, where my mother took refuge. It was in the Rue St. Honoré I first saw the light but, as soon as I could be removed, was sent to the Foundling. There I remained four years, until a loving young couple, who had lost their only child, adopted me. They were poor, and lived on the third floor of a wretched old house, in the Rue Plumet, where, I must own, I had enough, but of very coarse, food." "One day, however, fortune knocked at the door. My adopted mother was, and still is, one of the handsomest women in Paris. By accident an old friend, a distant relation, a man of high position, found her out. He at once procured a lucrative appointment for my supposed parent, and we moved to a splendid residence in the Faubourg du Roule. The friend, who lived close by, at once began to visit us every evening, and, by a curious coincidence, the husband always found business which required his absence. He never returned until a quarter of an hour after the other had left." "Accommodating husband," sneered Durand. "Just so. But, unfortunately for me, I became older, curious, was always turning up when not wanted, and saying things which were not required. It was decided that I was an incorrigible scamp, and must be sent away."