



Produced by James Rusk and David Widger





THE BLACK ROBE

by Wilkie Collins




BEFORE THE STORY.




FIRST SCENE.--BOULOGNE-SUR-MER.--THE DUEL.

I.

THE doctors could do no more for the Dowager Lady Berrick.

When the medical advisers of a lady who has reached seventy years of age
recommend the mild climate of the South of France, they mean in plain
language that they have arrived at the end of their resources. Her
ladyship gave the mild climate a fair trial, and then decided (as
she herself expressed it) to "die at home." Traveling slowly, she had
reached Paris at the date when I last heard of her. It was then the
beginning of November. A week later, I met with her nephew, Lewis
Romayne, at the club.

"What brings you to London at this time of year?" I asked.

"The fatality that pursues me," he answered grimly. "I am one of the
unluckiest men living."

He was thirty years old; he was not married; he was the enviable
possessor of the fine old country seat, called Vange Abbey; he had no
poor relations; and he was one of the handsomest men in England. When I
add that I am, myself, a retired army officer, with a wretched income, a
disagreeable wife, four ugly children, and a burden of fifty years on
my back, no one will be surprised to hear that I answered Romayne, with
bitter sincerity, in these words:

"I wish to heaven I could change places with you!"

"I wish to heaven you could!"