you talk so loud," said Pepe; "your voice roars
like a cataract."

"Why are you always recalling to me things that I do not wish to know,
or rather wish to forget. I know that some years in the desert will
accustom him--"

"You deceive yourself strangely, Bois-Rose, if you imagine that with the
prospects that await him in Spain, and the rights that he can claim,
this young man will consent to pass his whole life in the desert. It is
good for us, but not for him."

"What! is not the desert preferable to cities?" cried the old sailor,
who vainly tried to conceal from himself that Pepe was right. "I
undertake to make him prefer a wandering life to a settled one. Is it
not for movement, for fighting, and for the powerful emotions of the
desert that man is born?"

"Certainly," said Pepe, gravely, "and that is just why the towns are
deserted and the deserts peopled!"

"Do not jest, Pepe; I am speaking of serious things. While I leave
Fabian free to follow his own inclinations, I shall make him love this
captivating life. Is not this short sleep, snatched hastily between two
dangers, preferable to what one tastes after a day of idle security in
the towns. You yourself, Pepe--would _you_ wish to return to your own
country, since you have known the charms of a wandering life?"

"There is between the heir of the Medianas," replied Pepe, "and the old
coast-guard man a great difference. To him will come a fine property, a
great name, and a beautiful Gothic castle with towers like the cathedral
at Burgos; while I should be sent to fish for mackerel at Ceuta--which
is the most execrable life I know of and which I should have but one
chance of escaping from--that of waking some fine morning, at Tunis or
Tetuan, as a slave to our neighbours the Moors. I have here, it is
true, the daily chance of being scalped or burnt alive by the Indians.
Still the town is worse for me--but for Don Fabian--"

"Fabian has always lived in solitude, and will, I trust, prefer the calm
of the desert to the tumult of cities. How solemn and silent is all
around us! See here!" and he pointed to Fabian, "how the child sleeps,
softly lulled by the murmur of the waters, and by the breeze in the
willows. Look there, in the horizon at those fogs just coloured by the
sun, and that boundless space where man wanders in his primitive
liberty, like the birds in the air!"

The Spaniard shook his head doubtfully, although he partook the ideas of
the