erdicted! and that in this desert,
where he had neither persecutor nor jailer to fear, he would find a
prison, a dungeon!

After three days of anguish and tortures, after new and ineffectual
attempts,--exhausted by fatigue, by thirst, by hunger,--consumed by
fever, supervened in consequence of all his sufferings of body and
soul, he resigns himself to his fate; with his foot, he prepares his
last couch, composed of sand and dried leaves shaken from above by the
neighboring trees; he lies down, folds his arms, closes his eyes, and
prepares to die, thinking of his eternal salvation.

Although he tries not to allow himself to be distracted by other
thoughts, from time to time sounds from the outer world disturb his
pious meditations. First it is the joyous song of a bird. To these
vibrating notes another song replies from afar, on a more simple and
almost plaintive key. It is doubtless the female, who, with a sort of
modest and repressed tenderness, thus announces her retreat to him who
calls; then a rapid rustling is heard above the head of the prisoner.
It is the songster, hastening to rejoin his companion.

Selkirk has never known love. Once perhaps,--in a fit of youth and
delirium; and it was this false love which tore him from his studies,
from his country!

Ah! why did he not remain at Largo, with his father? To-day he also
would have had a companion! In that smiling country where coolness
dwells, where labor is so easy, life so sweet and calm, the paternal
roof would have sheltered his happiness! Oh! the joys of his infancy!
his green and sunny Scotland.

The regrets which arise in his heart he quickly banishes; his dear
remembrances he sacrifices to God; he weaves them into a fervent
prayer.

Very soon an approaching bleating rouses him again from his
abstractions. A goat, with restless eye, has just stretched her head
over the edge of the precipice, and for an instant fixes on him her
astonished glance. Then, as if re-assured, defying his powerlessness,
with a disdainful lip she quietly crops some tufts of grass growing on
the verge of the tunnel.

On seeing her, Selkirk instinctively lays his hand on the lasso which
is beside him.

'If I succeed in reaching her, in catching her,' said he, 'her blood
will quench the thirst which devours me, her flesh will appease my
hunger. But of what use would it be? Whence can I expect aid and
succor for my deliverance? This would then only prolong my
sufferings.'