rity in the household. His
house was not far from that of Etienne, so that he was ever at hand to
watch over the youth with the persistent affection and simple wiliness
characteristic of old soldiers. He checked his roughness when speaking
to the poor lad; softly he walked in rainy weather to fetch him from his
reverie in his crevice to the house. He put his pride into filling the
mother's place, so that her child might find, if not her love, at least
the same attentions. This pity resembled tenderness. Etienne bore,
without complaint or resistance, these attentions of the old retainer,
but too many links were now broken between the hated child and other
creatures to admit of any keen affection at present in his heart.
Mechanically he allowed himself to be protected; he became, as it were,
an intermediary creature between man and plant, or, perhaps one might
say, between man and God. To what shall we compare a being to whom all
social laws, all the false sentiments of the world were unknown, and who
kept his ravishing innocence by obeying nought but the instincts of his
heart?

Nevertheless, in spite of his sombre melancholy, he came to feel the
need of loving, of finding another mother, another soul for his soul.
But, separated from civilization by an iron wall, it was well-nigh
impossible to meet with a being who had flowered like himself.
Instinctively seeking another self to whom to confide his thoughts and
whose life might blend with his life, he ended in sympathizing with
his Ocean. The sea became to him a living, thinking being. Always in
presence of that vast creation, the hidden marvels of which contrast
so grandly with those of earth, he discovered the meaning of many
mysteries. Familiar from his cradle with the infinitude of those liquid
fields, the sea and the sky taught him many poems. To him, all was
variety in that vast picture so monotonous to some. Like other men whose
souls dominate their bodies, he had a piercing sight which could
reach to enormous distances and seize, with admirable ease and without
fatigue, the fleeting tints of the clouds, the passing shimmer of the
waters. On days of perfect stillness his eyes could see the manifold
tints of the ocean, which to him, like the face of a woman, had its
physiognomy, its smiles, ideas, caprices; there green and sombre; here
smiling and azure; sometimes uniting its brilliant lines with the
hazy gleams of the horizon, or again, softly swaying beneath the