of being true to this principle that he refused to show himself in the circumstances I speak of.  His obstinacy very nearly cost us dear, for on the earnestly longed-for break in the fog suddenly taking place a point of land was seen.  We thought we recognized the Island of Molenes:  the commander was hurriedly informed, and he sent an order to change our course.  A lightening at another point in the horizon showed us some rocks.  “The Pierres Vertes ahead!” sang out a coasting pilot specially shipped for the voyage, who was looking out from his perch on the foreyards, and the navigating officer tore off again to warn the commanding officer.  During all these comings and goings the curtain of fog came down again, and we went driving on towards the reefs at the rate of twelve knots an hour.  It could not be allowed to go on!  With or without leave the second officer took the command, and put an end to an impossible situation.  Our worthy commander only appeared just as we were dropping anchor in the roadstead, when all uncertainty was over, and I seem yet to see the looks that greeted his tardy appearance.  Everybody’s anxiety had been increased by knowing how he had lost the ship Le Superbe, seventy-four guns, off the Island of Paros, some years before, and under very peculiar circumstances.  For my own part, I learnt on this occasion what everything has confirmed me in since—­the danger of uncertain and divided authority either at sea or elsewhere.

When I got back to Paris, having finished the technical portion of my education, I went on with a course of history, with my sisters, especially my sister Mary, I applied myself with the utmost fervour to my drawing.  I worked with her daily, under the direction of Ary Scheffer, and I recollect our grief one morning on finding the Jeanne d’Arc she was modelling in wax for Versailles, melted by an overheated stove, had collapsed the whole length of its framework, to such an extent as to become the merest cripple.  By dint of lowering the temperature, and the use of a screw-jack applied in a peculiar manner, and vigorously turned by Ary Scheffer and myself, Jeanne d’Arc rose up again upon her framework, and the damage was soon made good.

About that time too, influenced by the genius of Victor Hugo, my sister Clementine and I were seized with a perfect passion for old Paris, that delightful Paris of ancient story.  We had Sauval’s thick volumes, we had searched all the old books for traces of the ancient legends, and we used to spend our afternoons going to see the sites and hunt for the remains of the places we had read about, There is not a church or a monument of which we did not know every detail, nor an alley or a corner in the quarters of the Halles, the Hotel de Ville, the Arsenal, the Temple, and the Pantheon that we had not carefully explored with the most fervent interest.  What joy it was to us one day when we were trying to trace the Hotel St. Paul, the old palace of our kings, to come upon a course of masonry which had undoubtedly belonged to it!