“I can't help thinking that I have had the pleasure of meeting you before, but I cannot remember where.”
With incredible audacity Frederick quietly replied: “Your face also seems very familiar to me. Perhaps we have met at Paris. Have you been long absent from France?”
Thereupon the conversation turned on Paris and Parisian society, and toward midnight “Mr. and Mrs. Muller,” taking leave of the surgeon, returned on board the Tigre.
Early the next morning, before the steamer cast loose its moorings, Frederick, who was smoking his morning's cigar on deck, saw a sight which, hard-hearted as he was, deeply moved him. A Jesuit missionary was carried on board in a dying condition. This unfortunate man had been detained for two years as a prisoner by the Anamites, and during the whole of this time the inhuman monsters had kept him in a wooden cage, so small that he could neither stand up nor lie down. As an additional refinement of cruelty, thick wedges of wood had been inserted between his fingers and toes and secured there with supple willow twigs. The hair of the poor wretch, who was only twenty-six years old, had become as white as snow, and he was entirely paralyzed! He died before the vessel reached Hong-Kong.
Frederick, as he directed his steps toward the saloon, could not help making a comparison between the easy and luxurious life he, who so little deserved it, was now enjoying, and the shattered and broken existence of this saint, who had never done anything but good during his short but pure and admirable career.
With a movement of impatience, quickly followed by a sneer, he turned away, and, dismissing these thoughts from his mind, knocked at the door of Nina's cabin.