You divine, from the appearance of my clothes, that I have not ten thousand francs with me. My father is an inn-keeper whom the railroads have ruined. In prosperous times he eats bread, in bad years potatoes. Add to this, that there are six children, all with good appetites. The day on which I received my commission from the Jardin des Plantes, there was a festival given in the family. My departure would not only increase the portion of each of my brothers, but I was to have two hundred and fifty francs per month and the expenses for my journey. It was a fortune . From that moment they ceased to call me Doctor. They dubbed me beef-merchant, so that I should appear rich! My brothers prophesied that I would be elected Professor by the University, on my return from Athens. My father hoped that I would return married. In his position of inn-keeper, he had assisted in some very romantic adventures. He cited, at least three times a week, the marriage of the Princess Ypsoff and Lieutenant Reynauld. The Princess occupied the finest apartments, with her two maids and her Courier, and she gave twenty florins a day. The French Lieutenant was in No. 17, way up under the eaves, and he paid a florin and a half, food included; however, after a month’s sojourn at the hotel, he departed in a carriage with the Russian lady . My poor father, with the partiality of a father, thought that I was handsomer and more elegant than Lieutenant Reynauld; he did not doubt but that, sooner or later, I would meet a princess who would enrich us all. If I did not find her at a table d’hote, I would see her in a railway carriage. If the powers which control the railroads were not propitious, there was still left the steamships. The evening of my departure, we drank a bottle of old Rhine wine, and by chance the last was poured into my glass bull bear. The good man wept with joy: it was a sure sign, and nothing could prevent me from marrying within a year. I respected his superstitions, and I refrained from saying that princesses rarely travel third class. As for lodgings, my humble luggage would not permit me to choose any but modest inns, and royal families do not, usually, lodge in them. The fact is, that I landed in Greece without an .
