a politician, were alike repulsive; and he had no feelings about him that disposed him to submit to the authority of a parent, from whom he had nothing to expect—for it was well understood, that of all the Count de Bellegarde either possessed from his ancestors, or acquired from his political advantages, D'Ermenonville would inherit only that share which, by its being entailed, his father could not deprive him. The error of which the Count thought he had been guilty, in allowing to this eldest son early independence, and boundless expence, made him determine to adopt, in regard to me and my brother, a conduct altogether contrary.—On his retirement from the world, my brother, who was the eldest of the two, and called the Baron de Rochemarte, was near fifteen, and I was only fourteen months younger—yet, though at that age, we should have been either pursuing our studies, or with the army, in which we had both commissions, my father took us away with him: and, with a governor whom he engaged, because he was the most rigid pedant he could find, he fixed us both in what we then thought the desolate solitude of Rochemarte—a place which he had fixed upon for his own residence; not only because it was so far from the scene of his former elevation; but because it was the only one of his capital houses that was not entailed on D'Ermenonville.! The gloomy solitude in which he lived—the power of life and death which he possessed in his domain, and the proneness of his mind to superstition, which was encouraged by the Monks of the neighbouring convent, who soon. found the advantage of having so liberal a benefactor—at once darkened and soured a temper, never very good. Accustomed to dictate and command, he could not now divest himself of the habit: and his vassals, and his sons, being the only persons over whom he could now exert it, were the victims of his harsh and imperious spirit—for in them he delighted to discover, or to fancy faults, only for the satisfaction of imposing punishment. It may be easily imagined, that to two lads of our ages, and who had from temper and constitution a keen relish for pleasures of every kind, the life we led was insupportable. The mild and soft-tempered Genevieve, our sister, who was then not more than twelve years old, though from her sex and disposition, more accustomed to, and able to endure solitude and confinement, began to feel the weight of those chains, of which, however, she did not complain; but