Chapter 1

CHAPTER I.

HEALTHFUL HOUSE.

The _carte de visite_ received that day, June 15, 189-, by the
director of the establishment of Healthful House was a very neat one,
and simply bore, without escutcheon or coronet, the name:

COUNT D'ARTIGAS.

Below this name, in a corner of the card, the following address was
written in lead pencil:

"On board the schooner _Ebba_, anchored off New-Berne, Pamlico Sound."

The capital of North Carolina--one of the forty-four states of the
Union at this epoch--is the rather important town of Raleigh, which is
about one hundred and fifty miles in the interior of the province. It
is owing to its central position that this city has become the seat
of the State legislature, for there are others that equal and
even surpass it in industrial and commercial importance, such as
Wilmington, Charlotte, Fayetteville, Edenton, Washington, Salisbury,
Tarborough, Halifax, and New-Berne. The latter town is situated on
estuary of the Neuse River, which empties itself into Pamlico Sound, a
sort of vast maritime lake protected by a natural dyke formed by the
isles and islets of the Carolina coast.

The director of Healthful House could never have imagined why the card
should have been sent to him, had it not been accompanied by a
note from the Count d'Artigas soliciting permission to visit the
establishment. The personage in question hoped that the director would
grant his request, and announced that he would present himself in the
afternoon, accompanied by Captain Spade, commander of the schooner
_Ebba_.

This desire to penetrate to the interior of the celebrated sanitarium,
then in great request by the wealthy invalids of the United States,
was natural enough on the part of a foreigner. Others who did not bear
such a high-sounding name as the Count d'Artigas had visited it, and
had been unstinting in their compliments to the director. The latter
therefore hastened to accord the authorization demanded, and added
that he would be honored to open the doors of the establishment to the
Count d'Artigas.

Healthful House, which contained a select _personnel_, and was assured
of the co-operation of the most celebrated doctors in the country, was
a private enterprise. Independent of hospitals and almshouses, but
subjected to the surveillance of the State, it comprised all the
conditions of comfort and salubrity essential to establishments of
this description designed to receive an opulent _clientele_.

It would have been difficult to find a more agreeable situation than
that of Healthful House. On the landward slope of a hill extended a
park of two hundred acres planted with the magnificent vegetation that
grows so luxuriantly in that