Thompson, who had followed his master, assisted him into his carriage, placed himself beside him, and ordered the driver to proceed to the hotel. But Delmé gave a quick impetuous motion of the hand, which the domestic understood well; and the horses' heads were turned towards the metropolis.
The mourner tarried not, even to bid his sister farewell; but sought once more his brother's grave. Some friendly hand had kept its turf smooth; no footsteps, save the innocent ones of children, had pressed its grassy mound. It was clothed with soft daisies and drooping harebells. The sun seemed to shine on that spot, to bid the wanderer be contented and at rest.
But as yet there was no rest for Delmé. And he stood beside the marble slab, beneath which lay Acmé Frascati. The downy moss--soft as herself--was luxuriating there; and the cry of the cicalas was pleasant to the ear; and the image of the young Greek girl, as in a vivid picture, rose to his mind's eye. She was not attired in her white cymar; nor was her head wreathed with monumental amaranths;--health was on her cheek, fond smiles on her pouting lip, and tender love swimming in her melting glance.
His own griefs came back on Delmé; he groaned aloud. He traversed the deserts, he crossed lofty mountains, he knew thirst and privations. He was scoffed at and spat upon in an infidel country--he was tossed on the ocean--he shook hands with danger.
He visited our wide Oriental possessions; and sojourned amid the spicy islands of the Indian Archipelago, where vegetation attains a magnificence unknown elsewhere, and animal life partakes of this unexampled exuberance,--where flowers of the most exquisite colours and fragrance charm the senses by day, and delicious plants saturate the air with their odours by night.
Delmé extended his wanderings to the rarely visited "many isles," which stud the vast Pacific, and found that there too were fruitful and smiling regions.
But not on the desert--nor on the mountains--nor in the land of the Moslem---nor on tempestuous seas--nor in those verdant islets, which seem to breathe of Paradise, to greet the wearied traveller; could Delmé's restless spirit find an abiding place, his thirst for foreign travel be slaked, or his heart know peace.
He madly sought oblivion, which could not be accorded him.