he had heard commemorated from infancy.

After his abdication the late king had retreated from the sphere of

politics, yet his domestic circle afforded him small content. The ex-queen

had none of the virtues of domestic life, and those of courage and daring

which she possessed were rendered null by the secession of her husband: she

despised him, and did not care to conceal her sentiments. The king had, in

compliance with her exactions, cast off his old friends, but he had

acquired no new ones under her guidance. In this dearth of sympathy, he had

recourse to his almost infant son; and the early development of talent and

sensibility rendered Adrian no unfitting depository of his father's

confidence. He was never weary of listening to the latter's often repeated

accounts of old times, in which my father had played a distinguished part;

his keen remarks were repeated to the boy, and remembered by him; his wit,

his fascinations, his very faults were hallowed by the regret of affection;

his loss was sincerely deplored. Even the queen's dislike of the favourite

was ineffectual to deprive him of his son's admiration: it was bitter,

sarcastic, contemptuous--but as she bestowed her heavy censure alike on

his virtues as his errors, on his devoted friendship and his ill-bestowed

loves, on his disinterestedness and his prodigality, on his pre-possessing

grace of manner, and the facility with which he yielded to temptation, her

double shot proved too heavy, and fell short of the mark. Nor did her angry

dislike prevent Adrian from imaging my father, as he had said, the type of

all that was gallant, amiable, and fascinating in man. It was not strange

therefore, that when he heard of the existence of the offspring of this

celebrated person, he should have formed the plan of bestowing on them all

The Last Man