CHAPTER I.
A GOLDEN TEMPLE.
In the very midst of the Belgian iron country, under the shadow of tall sheltering ridges of pine-clad mountain-land, nestles the fashionable little watering-place called Foretdechene.

Two or three handsome hotels; a bright white new pile of building, with vast windows of shining plate-glass, and a stately quadrangular courtyard; a tiny street, which looks as if a fragment of English Brighton had been dropped into this Belgian valley; a stunted semi-classic temple, which is at once a post-office and a shrine whereat invalids perform their worship of Hygeia by the consumption of unspeakably disagreeable mineral waters; a few tall white villas scattered here and there upon the slopes of pine-clad hills; and a very uncomfortable railway-station--constitute the chief features Foretdechene.

But right and left of that little cluster of shops and hotels there stretch deep sombre avenues of oak, that look like sheltered ways to Paradise--and the deep, deep blue of the August sky, and the pure breath of the warm soft air, and the tender green of the young pine-woods that clothe the sandy hills, and the delicious tranquillity that pervades the sleepy little town and bathes the hot landscape in a languorous mist, are charms that render Foretdechene a pleasant oasis amid the lurid woods and mountains of the iron country.
Only at stated intervals the quiet of this sleepy hollow is broken by the rolling of wheels, the jingling of bells, the cracking of whips, the ejaculations of drivers, and supplications of touters: only when the railroad carries away departing visitors, or brings fresh ones, is there anything like riot or confusion in the little town under the pine-clad hills--and even then the riot and confusion are of a very mild order, and create but a transient discord amongst the harmonies of nature.
And yet, despite the Arcadian tranquillity of the landscape, the drowsy quiet of the pine-groves, the deep and solemn shade of those dark avenues, where one might fondly hope to find some Druidess lingering beneath the shelter of the oaks, there is excitement of no common order to be found in the miniature watering-place of Foretdechene; and the reflective and observant traveller, on a modern sentimental journey, has only to enter the stately white building with the glittering plate-glass windows in order to behold the master-passions or the human breast unveiled for his pleasure and edification.
The ignorant traveller, impelled by curiosity, finds no bar to his entrance.

The doors are as wide open as if the mansion were an hotel; and yet it is not an hotel, though a placard which he passes informs the traveller that he may have ices and sorbets, if he will; nor is the bright fresh-looking building a theatre, for another placard informs the visitor that there are dramatic performances to be witnessed every evening in a building on one side of the quadrangle, which is a mere subsidiary attachment to the vast white mansion.

The traveller, passing on his way unhindered, save by a man in livery, who deprives him of his cane, ascends a splendid staircase and traverses a handsome antechamber, from which a pair of plate-glass doors open into a spacious saloon, where, in the warm August sunlight, a circle of men and women are gathered round a great green table, gambling.
The ignorant traveller, unaccustomed to the amusements of a Continental watering-place, may perhaps feel a little sense of surprise--a something almost akin to shame--as he contemplates that silent crowd, whose occupation seems so much the more strange to him because of their silence.