It was a peculiarity of mine in early life (which I never thought about at the time, but which has become evident in the course of this autobiography) to prefer the society of elderly men. In London I had liked to be with Mackay, Robinson the engraver, and Leslie, all gray-headed men, and in Paris I soon acquired a strong liking for M. Ouvrard, M. Gindriez, and Mr. Wyld. They were kind and open, and had experience, therefore they were interesting; my uncles in Lancashire had, no doubt, been kind in their own way, that is, in welcoming me to their houses, but they were both excessively reserved. Being at that time deeply interested in France, I was delighted to find a man like M. Gindriez who could give me endless information. His chief interest in life lay in French politics; art and literature being for him subjects of secondary concern, but by no means of indifference, and the plain truth is that he had a better and clearer conception of art than I myself had in those days, or for long afterwards. There was also for me a personal magnetism in M. Gindriez, which it was not easy to account for then, but which is now quite intelligible to me. He had in the utmost strength and purity the genuine heroic nature. I came to understand this in after years, and believe that it impressed me from the first. It is unnecessary to say more about this remarkable character in this place, because the reader will hear much of him afterwards. It is enough to say that I was attracted by his powers of conversation and his evident tenderness of heart.
When we had become better acquainted, M. Gindriez invited me to spend an evening at his house after dinner, and I went. He was living at that time on a boulevard outside the first wall, which has since been demolished. His _appartement_ was simply furnished, and not strikingly different in any way from the usual dwellings of the Parisian middle class. I had now been absent for some weeks from anything like a home, and after living in hotels it was pleasant to find myself at a domestic fireside. M. Gindriez had several children. The eldest was a girl of sixteen, extremely modest and retiring, as a well-bred _jeune fille_ generally is in France, and there was another daughter, very pretty and engaging, but scarcely more than a child; there were also two boys, the eldest a very taciturn, studious lad, who was at that time at the well-known college of Sainte Barbe. Their mother had been a woman of remarkable beauty, and still retained enough of it to attract the eye of a painter. She had also at times a certain unconscious grace and dignity of pose that the great old Italian masters valued more than it is valued now. M. Gindriez himself had a refined face, but my interest in him was due almost entirely to the charm and ease of his conversation.