so that on his death he and the beloved might be buried together, side by side. But after five months he fell in love with an English girl at Pau, and, as the intended bride positively refused to enter the house till the first wife was removed, the lead coffin was consigned to the double grave; and then, but not till then, did he conduct home his second wife. The whisky-bottle remained and was replenished periodically.
The French Protestant preacher at Pau was a M. Buscarlet, who had married an English woman. He was under a cloud at the time with the Consistory, as his views were regarded as heterodox. In a word, he had doubts relative to the Plenary Inspiration of Scripture, as well as some of the fundamental verities of the Christian faith—such as Calvinism still condescended to retain. Since then, French Protestantism has come very much round to his disbelief; and has abandoned even the Confession of La Rochelle. We were on calling terms, but were in no way intimate.
Abd-el-Kader was then a prisoner in the castle. He had there his wives and attendants, to the number of sixty. Their habits were so dirty that it was found necessary to remove the rich furniture and roll up and stow away the splendid tapestry. English and French were not allowed to visit him, but I managed to see him several times. We lodged in Maison Gautier on the Jurancon road beyond the bridge over the Gave. M. Gautier was a nurseryman, and he obtained leave to take flowers and fruit to the caged lion, and on such occasions I accompanied him. The Arabs spent their time in pacing up and down the rooms, and I do not think ever troubled their heads to look from the windows at the splendid prospect of the Pyrenees.
My grandmother and aunts occupied a flat in the Basses Plantes called Maison Marchadlier. On another flat was the Count de Montebello with his family. He was a son of Jean Lannes, who from a stable-boy at Lectours rose in the army to be a marshal of France and was created Due de Montebello by Napoleon. He died at Vienna, having had both his legs shot away at Essling, on May 31, 1809. Lannes, before his elevation, had married a girl named Méric, and had by her a son; but later he procured the annulment of the marriage, and then he married one of a higher, gentle class, a demoiselle de Guéheriene, who survived him and
