Page:The Mystery of Madeline Le Blanc (1900).djvu/25

Rh By the year 1811 he had fairly recovered; and by hisapplication to study was entitled to practise anywhere in France. In 1814, at the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty, his last hope of regaining any of his father's former possessions was shattered. For the next sixteen years he wandered from place to place, practising his profession.

He never stayed long anywhere; and wherever he had been, there always remained after his departure a sort of mysterious haze. No one knew him well; yet in the small communities where he had remained for any length of time, everybody knew him by sight, and respected his mysterious austerity. He was now, in the year 1830, fifty years of age. In appearance, he was of rough and wrinkled countenance, wore a copious gray mustache and a sharp chin-beard. His small eyes—one of which was blue and the other black—were set deep in his head, environed by coarse eyebrows and fleshy creases at the base of the lids. Though years had wrenched his form and features, so long as he kept his ugly eyes out of one's face, there was something stately in his appearance. Whether it