him in immediate possession of the fortune
devolving on him through his mother, and
taking his receipt with the terrible formality
and automaton-like stolidity of his character.
Gaston remained a short time with his father
after this; but the severe rule of the old
royalist was not much to his taste; and, in a
few months, the young Count de Raousset-
Boulbon, handsome, ardent, rich,
accomplished and generous, found himself in
the full flood of Parisian temptation and
Parisian excess. He was not long in
wearing off the thin lacker of modesty
and humility with which his collegiate
education might have covered his natural
impetuosity; not long either in forsaking the
white flag, in allegiance to which he had
been brought up, for the tricolor and the faith
of la jeune France. A year of Parisian life
sent him down to his father's house a very
different being to what he was even when he
left it. From the royalist school-boy had
emerged the republican dandy. Papa
Boulbon was horrified. After dinner, while
Gaston smoked his cigar on the terrace, he
said to his wife (Gaston's mother-in-law; his
own mother had died when he was an infant):

"Madam, it will be painful to me to dispute
with my son; impossible to support his
opposition. You see him! He returns to us
from Paris with a beard, and a cigar between
his lips. Let the cigar pass: but tell him, I
pray you, madam, that it does not become a
man of his birth to wear a beard like a moujik,
and that I shall be obliged to him if he
will make a sacrifice of it to my wishes."

Gaston's beard was a very fine one: he
was proud of it, and it added not a little
to his beauty; but the old man was not one
to say nay to. Gaston yielded; and, the next
morning, appeared with a smooth chin.

"Monsieur," said the count to him, " I
thank you for your deference to my wishes."

A few days after this, he said again to his
wife: "Madam, I authorise you to tell my
son, that he may let his beard grow again.
After duly considering the matter, I do not
see any objections to it."

Gaston, charmed, locked up his razors; but
the old man soon grew disgusted and
impatient at the unseemly stubble that necessarily
prefaced the full-grown beard.

"Madam," he said, one evening, "decidedly
a beard does not become Gaston. I pray you,
tell him to shave it off again.'

For all answer to this request, Gaston
went up stairs, packed up his trunks, and
started that night for Paris. The father and
son never met again.

Returned to Paris, Gaston plunged with
even fiercer passion and more reckless
licence, into the dissipations and vices of his
class; realising in himself all the mad
extravagances which Leon Gozlan, Balzac, Kock,
and others, have described as belonging to
the "lion" of the nineteenth century. Of
course, his fortune was soon dissipated, and
he had to take to various unpoetical means of
earning a simple subsistence. At last, wearied
with his position, and having in him a far
nobler character and larger nature than the
life of the Boulevards could satisfy, he
resolved on going to Algeria; there to settle
and colonise on a grand scale. Gaston de
Raousset could do nothing in miniature.
His father died about this time, and the
additional portion which came into his hands
helped him on wonderfully in Algeria.

His life was by no means dull or
uninteresting there. He made himself renowned
as one of the most daring sportsmen of the
colony; he performed many brilliant actions
as a military volunteer; and he kept a kind
of open house for all who cared to accept his
almost regal hospitality. He also wrote a
political pamphlet, which attracted considerable
notice, and procured him the favour of
the new governor of Algeria, the Duc
d'Aumale. All was going on merrily, when
the revolution of Eighteen hundred and
forty-eight broke out; and Gaston de
Raousset, like many others, was crushed
and ruined by the blow. But Gaston
was none the less a republican because the
republic had destroyed his fortunes. He
was not one to hunt with the hounds for the
moment of their success, unless he could join
heartily in the game; and his speeches to
the electors of the Bouches des Rhône, and
of Vaucluse, his articles in the journal which
he edited for more than a year, his whole
conduct and language bound him publicly to
the cause of liberty, though he made but
little personal gain out of his advocacy. For,
he failed at the general elections, and he
failed at the election for the Legislative
Assembly. Disgusted at his non-success, he
quitted Paris and France for the golden land
of California.

He sailed from Southampton on the
seventeenth of May in the Avon, going as a
steerage passenger among sailors and
servants. It was a hard trial for his pride; also
for one of his luxurious habits; but the other
French gentlemen on board soon found out
his real value, and, steerage passenger as
he was, he associated with the cabin
passengers as their equal: which assuredly he
was, and somewhat their superior. At San
Francisco he turned fisherman and fish salesman;
then he was a lighterman, working hard
from morning to night, in lading and unlading
ships; and lastly, he went off to Los Angeles
and San Diego to buy cows, for the purpose
of reselling them at an enormous profit at
San Francisco. He made the journey many
times; once striking off on a solitary voyage
of discovery. But his cow-selling ended
disastrously, though it gave him a clear
knowledge of the country, and enabled him
to mature the great project he had
conceived. The weakness of the Mexican
government, and the hatred of the people for the
Americans, gave him the idea of forming a