He is indeed
_sui generis_. Some five and twenty years ago there appeared in
Louisville a dapper gentleman, who declared himself a Marseillais, and who
subsequently came to be known variously as The Major and The Frenchman. I
shall not mention him otherwise in this veracious chronicle, but, looking
through the city directory of Marseilles I found an entire page devoted to
his name, though all the entries may not have been members of his family.
There is no doubt that he was a Marseillais.
Wandering through the streets of the old city, now in a cafe of La
Cannebiere and now along a quay of the Old Port, his ghost has often
crossed my path and dogged my footsteps, though he has lain in his grave
this many a day. I grew to know him very well, to be first amused by him,
then to be interested, and in the end to entertain an affection for him.
The Major was a delightful composite of Tartarin of Tarascon and the
Brigadier Gerard, with a dash of the Count of Monte Cristo; for when he was
flush--which by some odd coincidence happened exactly four times a year--he
was as liberal a spendthrift as one could wish to meet anywhere between the
little principality of Monaco and the headwaters of the Nile; transparent
as a child; idiosyncratic to a degree.
I understand Marseilles better and it has always seemed nearer to me since
he was born there and lived there when a boy, and, I much fear me, was
driven away, the scapegrace of excellent and wealthy people; not, I feel
sure, for any offense that touched the essential parts of his manhood.
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