During the
earlier part of the siege of Paris, however, the reading of my father's
letters and my own from the pulpit at the close of the usual service saved
the colony's pastor from the trouble of composing a bad sermon, or of
picking out an indifferent one from some forgotten theological work. My
father, on arriving at Saint Servan, secluded himself as far as possible,
so as to rest awhile before proceeding to England; but I went about much
as usual; and my letters read from the pulpit, and sundry other matters,
having made me a kind of "public character," I was at once pounced upon in
the streets, carried off to the club and to private houses, and there
questioned and cross-questioned by a dozen or twenty Crimean and Indian
veteran officers who were following the progress of the war with a
passionate interest.
A year or two previously, moreover, my stepmother had formed a close
friendship with one of the chief French families of the town. The father,
a retired officer of the French naval service, was to have commanded a
local Marching Battalion, but he unfortunately sickened and died, leaving
his wife with one daughter, a beautiful girl who was of about my own age.
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