Near three weeks had now elapsed at Nice, during which the disorder of La Luc seemed rather to increase than abate, when his physician very honestly confessed the little hope he entertained from the climate, and advised him to try the effect of a sea voyage, adding that if the experiment failed, even the air of Montpellier appeared to him more likely to afford relief than that of Nice. La Luc received this disinterested advice with a mixture of gratitude and disappointment. The circumstances which had made him reluctant to quit Savoy, rendered him yet more so to protract his absence and increase his expenses; but the ties of affection that bound him to his family, and the love of life, which so seldom leaves us, again prevailed over inferior considerations; and he determined to coast the Mediterranean as far as Languedoc, where if the voyage did not answer his expectation he would land and proceed to Montpellier. When M. Amand learned that La Luc designed to quit Nice in a few days, he determined not to leave it before him. During this interval he had not sufficient resolution to deny himself the frequent conversation of Adeline, though her presence, by reminding him of his lost wife, gave him more pain than comfort. He was the second son of a French gentleman of family, and had been married about a year to a lady to whom he had long been attached, when she died in her lying-in. The infant soon followed its mother, and left the disconsolate father abandoned to grief, which had preyed so heavily on his health, that his physician thought it necessary to send him to Nice. From the air of Nice, however, he had derived no benefit; and he now determined to travel further into Italy, though he no longer felt any interest in those charming scenes which in happier days and with her whom he never ceased to lament, would have afforded him the highest degree of mental luxury--now he sought only to escape from himself, or rather from the image of her who had once constituted his truest happiness. La Luc having laid his plan, hired a small vessel, and in a few days embarked, with a sick hope, bidding adieu to the shores of Italy and the towering Alps, and seeking on a new element the health which had hitherto mocked his pursuit.