Dr. Vaudelier was about fifty years of age.  He was descended from one of the old French families of Louisiana; and had been, for nearly thirty years, a practising physician in the city of New Orleans, during which time he had accumulated a very handsome fortune.  At the age of twenty-five he had been married to a lady, whose only recommendations were her personal beauty and her fashionable accomplishments.  Her vanity had disgusted him, and her uncontrollable temper had embittered to its very dregs the cup of his existence.  Being naturally of a gloomy and melancholy temperament, this unfortunate union had rendered his life almost insupportable.  Domestic happiness, to which he had looked forward with high-wrought anticipations, proved, in his case, to have no foundation.

He was disappointed.  His dream of home and its blessings faded away, and was supplanted by a terrible reality.  He grew more and more melancholy.  But there was a solace, which saved him from absolute misery.  Two children—­a boy and a girl—­blessed his otherwise unhallowed union.  The education of these children was the only joy his home afforded; but even this to his misanthropic mind could not compensate for his matrimonial disappointment.

Years passed away; the son was sent to college, from which, to the anguish of his father, he was expelled for gross misconduct.  The young man returned to New Orleans, and became one of the most dissolute and abandoned characters of the city.  Dr. Vaudelier disowned him, and sunk the deeper in his melancholy.

The death of his wife left him alone with his daughter; and if the fatal influence of past years could have been removed, perhaps he might have been a happy man.  The daughter was a beautiful girl, and promised to realize all the fond expectations of her father.  Her daily education and method of life, as directed by her father, were better calculated to fit her for the occupancy of a nun’s cell than for rational society.

About five years previous to the time of our story, the solemn quiet of Dr. Vaudelier’s dwelling was disturbed by the arrival of a young French gentleman, bearing letters of introduction to the misanthropic physician.  This gentleman was delighted with the daughter of his host, and she experienced a before unknown pleasure in his society.  The doctor was, to some extent, obliged to abandon the “pleasures of melancholy,” and accompany the young couple into the world.

This intimacy between the young persons rapidly ripened into love.  Dr. Vaudelier’s inquiries into the character and circumstances of the young gentleman were not satisfactory, and he refused to sanction the union.  Perhaps he was influenced more in this decision by the dread of parting with his daughter than by any other motive.  The father’s refusal was followed by the elopement of the young couple,—­an act which blasted the only remaining hope of the misanthrope.  His heart was too sensitive to endure the shock.