I don't suppose you will be astonished at a curious encounter which has
just taken place.

I must tell you that in my uncle's character while in Paris,
Barbassou-Pasha, General in the Turkish cavalry, predominates over
Captain Barbassou the sailor. He takes a ride every morning, and I of
course accompany him. These are our occasions both for intimate talks
and for discussing serious questions; and I beg you to understand that
my uncle's notions upon the latter are by no means ordinary ones. He
adorns such questions with quite original views--views which are
certainly not the property of any other mortal known or likely to be
known in this world below. He starts a subject for me, and I give him
the cue as well as I can.

I know of nothing more instructive than to
follow his lines of argument--he has a separate one for each
subject--upon different departments of private and political life,
judged from his own standpoint. As a legislator I fancy he would commit
radical mistakes; but as a philosopher, I doubt very much if a match
could be found for him, for I don't think that his methods can be
compared with those of any existing school of thought.

The other morning we went to the forest of Mendon; my uncle, as a lover
of the picturesque, considers that the Bois de Boulogne, with its lake,
looks as if it had been taken out of a box of German toys. We arrived at
Villebon, a sort of farm situated in the middle of the forest, with a
few fields attached to it. There is a restaurant there, which is much
frequented on Sundays during the summer.