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.
CHAPTER XXII.
FREDERICK MEETS HIS FATHER.
A few days later, a cab drew up at the door of a hotel on the Puerto del Sol at Madrid, and from it alighted Frederick von Waldberg, in his latest role as Count Linska de Castillon.
Finding, however, the Spanish capital intolerably hot and dismally empty, he soon turned his steps northward again, and took up his residence in the pretty seaport town of St. Sebastien, which is the most fashionable bathing-place on the Peninsula. It was crowded at the time with all the cream of Spanish society; and Frederick, with his ordinary skill and savoir faire, soon became acquainted with all the best people there, including a clique of gay young clubmen, who turned the night into day, and gambled, danced, flirted, and drank, with untiring energy.
Frederick's passion for cards soon revived in all its intensity in this vortex of dissipation, and he seldom left the “Salon de Jeu” of the Casino before the small hours of the morning. At first he won a great deal, but soon his luck began to fail him, and at the end of three weeks he discovered, to his disgust, that he had left on the green baize of the card-table a sum of over 150,000 francs.
“This has got to stop,” muttered he, angrily, “or I shall soon be running down hill at a rapid pace. The question is, how can I stop now without arousing comment?”
At the beginning of his stay in St. Sebastien, he had been introduced by a young Madrilene, who was staying at the same hotel, to a charming family, composed of the father, an old Spanish grandee; the mother, who had been a beauty, and their lovely daughter, Dolores. Don Garces y Marcilla was evidently a wealthy man, and occupied a luxuriously appointed villa on the sea-shore. Frederick soon began to be a constant visitor at this house, and his attentions to the fair Dolores were so marked that they became the talk of the beau-monde of St. Sebastien. Dolores was a remarkably dashing and handsome girl, with fiery black eyes and raven tresses. Her complexion was dark, and her lips were of the vivid crimson of a pomegranate flower. She was evidently very much in love with Frederick, and he had but little doubt that he would be accepted if he chose to ask her to be his wife.