A letter arrived for me from one of my younger sisters at Paris.

It contained alarming news of a person very dear to me--already mentioned in the first of these pages as my good Papa.
Was the venerable author of my being dangerously ill of a mortal disease?
Alas! he was not exactly that--but the next worst thing to it.

He was dangerously in love with a disreputable young woman.

At what age?
At the age of seventy-five! What can we say of my surviving parent?
We can only say, This is a vigorous nature; Papa has an evergreen heart.
I am grieved to trouble you with my family concerns.

But they mix themselves up intimately, as you will see in due time, with the concerns of Oscar and Lucilla.