In such engagements the time passed until I might very
well expect an answer from my father. Two mails
followed each other, and brought nothing. By the third
I received a long and almost incoherent letter of
remorse, encouragement, consolation, and despair. From
this pitiful document, which (with a movement of piety)
I burned as soon as I had read it, I gathered that the
bubble of my father's wealth was burst, that he was now
both penniless and sick; and that I, so far from
expecting ten thousand dollars to throw away in
juvenile extravagance, must look no longer for the
quarterly remittances on which I lived. My case was
hard enough; but I had sense enough to perceive, and
decency enough to do, my duty. I sold my curiosities--
or, rather, I sent Pinkerton to sell them; and he had
previously bought, and now disposed of them, so wisely
that the loss was trifling. This, with what remained
of my last allowance, left me at the head of no less
than five thousand francs. Five hundred I reserved for
my own immediate necessities: the rest I mailed inside
of the week to my father at Muskegon, where they came
in time to pay his funeral expenses.
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