"Do not be disturbed. The phantoms will not visit you, not, I fear,
myself either. But you must promise faith in my veracity; for I am
about to tell you a tale of fact, and not of fancy.
"It happened to me many years ago,--how flatteringly that little
phrase seems to extend the scale of one's being!--when I had just
entered on the active duties of manhood, that some affairs called me to
New Orleans, and detained me there several months. Letters of
friendship gave me admission into some of the most agreeable French
families of that _quasi_ Parisian city, and in the reception of
their hospitality I soon lost the feeling of isolation which attends a
stranger in a crowded mart. My life at that time was without shadows. I
had health, friends, education, position,--youth, as well, which then
seemed a blessing, though I would not now exchange for it my crown of
years and experience. Fortune only I then had not; and because I had it
not, I am telling you, to-night, this story.
"It chanced, one day, that I was invited to dine at the house of an
aristocratic subject of the old French _regime_. I did not know
the family, and a previous engagement tempted me to decline the
invitation; but one of those mysterious impulses which are in fact the
messengers of Destiny compelled me to go, and I went.
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