Meanwhile Chudleigh Wilmot, bearing the secret of his great sorrow about with him, bearing with him also the dread horror and gnawing remorse which the fear that his wife had committed self-destruction had engendered in his breast, had sought safety in flight from the scene of his temptation, and oblivion in absence from his daily haunts, and to a certain extent had found both. How many of us are there who have experienced the benefit of that blessed change of climate, language, habit of life? I declare I believe that the continental boats rarely leave the Dover or the Folkestone pier without carrying away amongst their motley load some one or two passengers who are going, not for pleasure or profit, not with the idea of visiting foreign cities or observing foreign manners, not with the intention of gaining bodily health, or for the vain-glory of being able to say on their return that they have been abroad (which actuates not a few of them), but simply in the hope that the entire change will bring to them surcease of brain-worry and heart-despondency, calm instead of anxiety, peace in place of feverish longing, rest--no matter how dull, how stupid, how torpid--instead of brilliant, baleful, soul-harrowing excitement. After having pursued the beauty of Brompton through the London season; after having spent a little fortune in anonymous bouquets for her and choice camellias for his own adornment; after having duly attended at every fête offered by the Zoological and Botanical Societies, danced himself weary at balls, maimed his feet at croquet-parties, and ricked his neck with staring up at her box from the opera-stalls,--Jones, finding all his _petits soins_ unavailing, and learning that the rich stock-broker from Surbiton has distanced him in the race, and is about to carry off the prize, flings himself and his portmanteau on board the Ostend boat, and finds relief and a renewal of his former devotion to himself among the quaint old Belgian cities. By the time he arrives at the Rhinebord he is calmer; he has lapsed into the sentimental stage, and is enabled to appreciate and, if anybody gives him the chance, to quote all the lachrymose and all the morbid passages. He relapses dreadfully when he gets to Homburg, because he then thinks it necessary to--as he phrases it in his diary--"seek the Lethe of the gaming-table;" but having lost his five pounds' worth of florins, he is generally content; and when he arrives in Switzerland finds himself in a proper-tempered state of mind, quite fitted to commune with Nature, and to convey to the Jungfrau his very low opinion of the state of humanity in general, and of the female being who has blighted his young affections in particular. And by the time that his holiday is over, and he returns to his office or his chambers, he has forgotten all the nonsense that enthralled him, and is prepared to commence a new course of idiotcy, _da capo_, with another enchantress.