Paul wrung the hand of the old man and went on board.  Mathias stood upon the pier, looking at his client, who leaned against the shrouds, defying the crowed before him with a glance of contempt.  At the moment when the sailors began to weigh anchor, Paul noticed that Mathias was making signals to him with his handkerchief.  The old housekeeper had hurried to her master, who seemed to be excited by some sudden event.  Paul asked the captain to wait a moment, and send a boat to the pier, which was done.  Too feeble himself to go aboard, Mathias gave two letters to a sailor in the boat.

“My friend,” he said, “this packet” (showing one of the two letters) “is important; it has just arrived by a courier from Paris in thirty-five hours.  State this to Monsieur le comte; don’t neglect to do so; it may change his plans.”

“Would he come ashore?”

“Possibly, my friend,” said the notary, imprudently.

The sailor is, in all lands, a being of a race apart, holding all land-folk in contempt.  This one happened to be a bas-Breton, who saw but one thing in Maitre Mathias’s request.

“Come ashore, indeed!” he thought, as he rowed.  “Make the captain lose a passenger!  If one listened to those walruses we’d have nothing to do but embark and disembark ’em.  He’s afraid that son of his will catch cold.”

The sailor gave Paul the letter and said not a word of the message.  Recognizing the handwriting of his wife and de Marsay, Paul supposed that he knew what they both would urge upon him.  Anxious not to be influenced by offers which he believed their devotion to his welfare would inspire, he put the letters in his pocket unread, with apparent indifference.

Absorbed in the sad thoughts which assail the strongest man under such circumstances, Paul gave way to his grief as he waved his hand to his old friend, and bade farewell to France, watching the steeples of Bordeaux as they fled out of sight.  He seated himself on a coil of rope.  Night overtook him still lost in thought.  With the semi-darkness of the dying day came doubts; he cast an anxious eye into the future.  Sounding it, and finding there uncertainty and danger, he asked his soul if courage would fail him.  A vague dread seized his mind as he thought of Natalie left wholly to herself; he repented the step he had taken; he regretted Paris and his life there.  Suddenly sea-sickness overcame him.  Every one knows the effect of that disorder.  The most horrible of its sufferings devoid of danger is a complete dissolution of the will.  An inexplicable distress relaxes to their very centre the cords of vitality; the soul no longer performs its functions; the sufferer becomes indifferent to everything; the mother forgets her child, the lover his mistress, the strongest man lies prone, like an inert mass.  Paul was carried to his cabin, where he stayed three days, lying on his back, gorged with grog by the sailors, or vomiting; thinking of nothing, and sleeping much.  Then he revived into a species of convalescence, and returned by degrees to his ordinary condition.  The first morning after he felt better he went on deck and passed the poop, breathing in the salt breezes of another atmosphere.  Putting his hands into his pockets he felt the letters.  At once he opened them, beginning with that of his wife.