The morning papers on the following day contained the announcement of Colonel Charles Clery's sudden death, and after devoting some space to a brief outline of his career, concluded with the following sentences:
“The late colonel dined the night before his death at the house of the Marquis of Kingsbury, in Park lane. He appeared to be in excellent health and spirits, and left some time after midnight with the Comte de Vaugelade, in whose company he walked up Piccadilly. The count is reported to be the last person who saw him alive.
A couple of days later, and before Frederick had had an opportunity of calling again at Park lane, a well-known society paper, renowned for the venom of its attacks and for the correctness of its information, published the following paragraph:
“Who is the Comte de Vaugelade, the foreign nobleman, in whose company the late Colonel Clery was last seen alive? We are informed, both at the Belgian Legation and at the French Embassy, that the name and the title are extinct.”
These words caught Frederick's eye as he was glancing over the papers after his early breakfast in the privacy of his own room three days after Colonel Clery's death. He immediately realized that this, together with Lady Alice's mysterious words, was making London too hot for him. It was a great disappointment to have to leave England just as he believed that he was on the point of obtaining his heart's fondest wish—namely, a wife belonging to a wealthy and [Pg 177] noble family, who would place her husband for once and all in the sphere to which he was born. He could then have left his career of adventurer far behind him, and lived the untrammeled life of a gentleman of means and leisure, respected and honored by all.
Men, according to the old Greeks, were the toys of the gods, who, from their high estate in Olympus, put evil and foul instincts and desires into their mortal hearts, and then, when the evil actions became the outlet of evil thoughts, amused themselves by watching the fruitless efforts made by their victims to escape a cruel and merciless goddess, called Nemesis, who stood there ready to punish them. The gods may have enjoyed it, but how about the poor mortals? In these days of skepticism and unbelief we have dropped this deity, but only to replace her by another, whom we have christened Fate, and whom we use as a scapegoat upon which to lay the blame of our own shortcomings. The true religion of Fate, however, is that our lives are the outcome of our actions. Every action, good or bad, has its corresponding reward—as Frederick found to his cost.
He resolved to leave London without delay; but, fearing that if he traveled via Dover or Folkestone, he might meet a number of his English acquaintances, and thereby attract attention—a thing he particularly wished to avoid—he determined to take the train for Southampton that very afternoon, and thence to proceed to St. Malo, on the coast of Brittany.
Before his departure, he wrote a long letter to Lady Kingsbury, informing her that to his great sorrow he had been called away by his only sister's dangerous illness, and that, having no time to come and make his adieus in person, he begged her ladyship to remember him most gratefully to the marquis, and to her son and daughters, whose kindness, as well as her own, he could never forget. He added that he hoped soon to be able to return to London, [Pg 178] since it was his most cherished wish to meet them all again.
That same evening he embarked on board one of those small steamboats which make the passage between Southampton and St. Malo, and as he lay tossing on the narrow couch of the deck cabin, many a bitter thought filled his troubled mind. He got but little sleep, and when the vessel steamed into the harbor of St. Malo he was standing on deck, looking moodily into the deep, transparent waters, where the jelly-fish were floating many fathoms beneath the surface of the bay, and where a school of porpoises were sporting in the foaming track left by the ship.
St. Malo is one of the most picturesque places in France, and one of the most ancient. It is fortified, and its gray, moss-grown walls and battlements, when seen from the entrance of the harbor, carry one back to old feudal times.
Frederick, having passed his trunks through the custom-house, made his way to the best hotel in the place—a grim-looking stone building, with mullioned windows, rusty iron balconies, and peaked roof, which looked more like one of Dore's pictures than any modern hostelry. Entering the office of the hotel, he asked for a sitting-room and bedroom, and was soon ushered into the very suite of apartments in which the poet Chateaubriand had been born. The ponderous oak furniture of the rooms, coupled with the dark paneling of the walls, rendered them a rather gloomy place of abode.
He walked listlessly to the window, and amused himself in watching the crowd of peasants, who, as it was market-day, were assembling upon the esplanade in front of the hotel. The poorer classes have kept here in all its integrity the costume which was worn before the French revolution of 1793 by the peasants in Brittany and the Vendee. The men with their red coats, baggy white breeches, tied with ribbons at the knee over their crimson stockings, low silver-buckled shoes, and three-cornered hats; the women with [Pg 179] their short dark woolen petticoats, blue or pink aprons, lace fichus, and white caps, which look like the wings of a gigantic butterfly, presented a scene not only animated, but also exceedingly picturesque, which appealed strongly to Frederick's artistic instincts. Taking his sketch-book with him, he went down stairs again, with the intention of making a few sketches of this queer little town and its quaint inhabitants.
He walked over to St. Servan, and, after spending some time in taking a sketch of the walls and turrets of St. Malo, he hired a boat and rowed over to the island of Grand Bey, where he intended to visit Chateaubriand's monument. When he returned to the Hotel de France, he ordered his dinner to be brought up to his sitting-room; and long after the piquant little chambermaid had removed the cloth, and noiselessly left the great dark room, he sat wrapt deep in thought, brooding over the past and planning out the future, which seemed very uncertain to him at that moment.