likewise escaped with her father, Lieutenant Louis Christophe Deynaut, and, her mother, Lady Marie Therese Vallade, from the island. After the marriage of Captain de Bruslé he emigrated with his wife and her father's family to New Orleans. Several children were the fruit of this marriage, among whom was Miss Aimee de Bruslé, remarkable for her beauty, her wit, and musical genius. Miss de Bruslé at the age of fifteen was married to Mr. Edward Gottschalk, a broker, of great reputed wealth, much esteemed as a gentleman of fine culture, and remarkable as a linguist,—he spoke eight or nine languages. On the 8th of May, 1829, Mrs. Gottschalk gave birth to her eldest son, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, the subject of this sketch. He was named Moreau after an uncle on his mother's side, the Count Moreau de I'lslet.
From his birth he was a precocious but rather delicate child, and early displayed a taste for music, singing all the tunes he heard played. The cholera, in 1831, took from him a little sister, and left his mother, who had also been attacked with the disease, at death's door. Her physician having ordered a change of air, his father purchased a property at Pass Christian, on the Gulf of Mexico, where he decided to settle and reside until his wife's health should be perfectly restored.
At this time it was a charming but wild and almost uninhabited spot. The change of scene and air seemed to have the desired effect. Mrs. Gottschalk began to improve, and Moreau, then about three years of age, seemed to take new life amidst the beauties of nature which surrounded him; his health became invigorated, and he followed his father in all his rambles, which he, a great lover of nature, took morning and evening.
Madam Gottschalk, who, since her health had been impaired, sang only at intervals, resumed again her youthful occupation (she was then only nineteen years old), and once more commenced studying singing. Moreau, seated alongside of her on a little stool, listened attentively to his mother, without, however, her observing the extraordinary interest which the child manifested for the music. One day, when she had been practising very assiduously the grand air of 'Grace,' from the opera of 'Robert le Diable,'
