Book jacket is discolored Farrar, Straus and Company, 1962 book club edition, 471 pages Madame Castel's lodger is P. G. T. Beauregard, full general, hero of Fort Sumter, victor at Manassas, first idol of the Confederacy- comparable lover! Historians often refer to him as "Napoleon in Gray"; his devoted soldiers called him "Old Bory"; his Anglo-Saxon fellow officers "the Great Creole"; his family and friends, Pierre; and his countless female admirers by endearing terms too numerous to mention. His story, now told for the first time in the form of superb biographical fiction, is one of tremendous drama from start to finish. A scion of Louisiana's landed gentry of French, Spanish and Italian background, his early years were passed on a fabulous plantation which, after the Mexican War, was given the name of the first battle in which he won his spurs-Con-treras. His father, determined that he should "be an American," sent him to a boarding school in New York whose directors were veterans of the Napoleonic Pierre's. childhood desire to be a soldier and, despite family opposition, he entered West Point and eventually graduated second in his class, having meanwhile conceived a deep dislike for General Winfield Scott and an abiding affection for Robert Anderson-later the defender of Fort Sumter-and several other fellow students who were to become officers in the Union Army. He had also had his first love affair. But it was not until after his return to Louisiana that he met the beautiful Laure Villeré and, after a whirl. wind courtship, persuaded her to marry him. Black and white photographs