I am an American, junior partner in a London mercantile house having a large Swiss connection; and a transaction—needless to specify her—required immediate and personal supervision abroad, at a season of the year when I would gladly have kept festival in London with my friends. But my journey was destined to bring me an adventure of a very remarkable character, which made me full amends for the loss of Christmas cheer at home.
I crossed the Channel at night from Dover to Calais. The passage was bleak and snowy, and the passengers were very few. On board the steamboat I remarked one traveler whose appearance and manner struck me as altogether unusual and interesting, and I deemed it by no means a disagreeable circumstance that, on arriving at Calais, this man entered the compartment of the railway carriage in which I had already seated myself.
So far as the dim light permitted me a glimpse of the stranger's face, I judged him to be about fifty years of age. The features were delicate and refined in type, the eyes dark and deep-sunken, but full of intelligence and thought, and the whole aspect of the man denoted good birth, a nature given to study and meditation, and a life of much sorrowful experience.
Two other travelers occupied our carriage until Amiens was reached. They then left us, and the interesting stranger and I remained alone together.
"A bitter night," I said to him, as I drew up the window, "and the worst of it is yet to come! The early hours of dawn are always the coldest."
"I suppose so," he answered in a grave voice.
The voice impressed me as strongly as the face; it was subdued and restrained, the voice of a man undergoing great mental suffering.
"You will find Paris bleak at this season of the year," I continued, longing to make him talk. "It was colder there last winter than in London."
"I do not stay in Paris," he replied, "save to breakfast."
"Indeed; that is my case. I am going on to Bale."