I had just reached Paris from Marseilles, where I had arrived a few days before, by way of Malta, from Alexandria. On reaching Paris it was my intention to rest but one night there, and then pursue my way _via_ Rouen, in Normandy, to Diéppe and England, and thence home to America. Like all other travellers, I desired to spend a week in Paris, but business prevented, consequently I made preparations to leave the famous city on the day following my arrival; but I resigned myself to this necessity with all the more fortitude, for the reason that by so doing I should be able to retain the company of a very pleasant gentleman, whose society I had enjoyed continually from Cairo, where we first met, to Paris, and which I might, by making no stop in the latter place, continue to enjoy all the way home, as he intended to start just so soon as he rejoined his daughter, who, for about three years had been receiving her education in Paris, and whom he was about to conduct to his home--a newly-purchased one in New York. The history of Mr. Im Hokeis and his adventures, as related to me on our journey, are so well worth repeating that I shall give a short abstract, even at the risk of enlarging this chapter. “I was born,” said he, “on the banks of the Caspian Sea, of the family of Hokeis--a sacred family, in whom was invested the highest order of Priesthood, and on whom devolved the care of the sacred fire, for we were Guebres, and the fire must never be extinguished, nor had it been, so say our records, for many thousand years, for Religion with us is quite a different thing from what it is among the men of Islam, India, Rome, or the West. We pride ourselves upon the purity of our faith, and its superiority to all that is professed by the children of Adam, quite as much as we do our Pedigree from _Ish_, the great founder of our race and a powerful pre-Adamite king and conqueror.”