JEAN BERNY, SAILOR
 
 JEAN BEMY, SAILOR 
 
 BY 
 
 PIERRE LOTI 
 
 Of the Academie Fran$aise 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE BOOK OF PITY AND OF DEATH, 
 "INTO MOROCCO," ETC. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 E. P. ROBINS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 104 & 106 FOURTH AVENUE
 
 COPTKIGHT, 1893, BT 
 
 CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 THE MEB8HON COMPANY PRESS, 
 BAHWAY, N. J.
 
 JEAN BEMY, SAILOR 
 
 MARCHING in the procession of the Fete- 
 Dieu, in company with three other children 
 attired like himself, was a very small boy, 
 dressed to represent an angel, videlicet, in a 
 little cambric shirt and a pair of white 
 dove's wings fastened on his shoulders. 
 That was in the month of June, beneath 
 the warm, bright southern sun, in remote 
 Provence, where it touches Italy. 
 
 The other three angels were fair and 
 trudged along with eyes downcast, mani- 
 festly taking themselves and the situation 
 in general very seriously. But our friend, 
 little Jean, brown as a berry and with a 
 tangle of curls surmounting his pretty face, 
 the handsomest and strongest of them all,
 
 2 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 cast comical looks at the people kneeling 
 along his path, not a whit impressed by 
 the solemnity of the occasion, and evidently 
 bent on having a good time. He had an 
 appearance of vigor and perfect health, 
 with regular features, a complexion like 
 the sunny side of a ripe peach, and eye- 
 brows that resembled two narrow ribbons 
 of black velvet. The expression of his 
 candid, laughing eyes was more infantile, 
 more babyish, than accorded well with his 
 age of six or seven years, and the orbs 
 themselves, dilated wide between lashes 
 of unusual length, were of a deep, limpid 
 blue, surprising in that little Arab face. 
 
 His relatives a widowed mother, who 
 still wore mourning but had long since laid 
 aside the long crape veil, and a kind old 
 grandfather in black frock coat and white 
 cravat followed the procession at a dis- 
 tance, among the crowd, a happy smile 
 upon their lips, proud to see their darling 
 look so handsome and to hear his praises in 
 the mouth of everyone.
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 3 
 
 Not blessed with superfluity of this 
 world's goods were they, this mother and 
 grandfather, possessing nothing save a little 
 house in town and a small place in the 
 country where there were a few orange 
 trees and a field or two of roses ; connected 
 by ties of kinship, too, through all this 
 part of France, with people more wealthy 
 than themselves, landowners and "per- 
 fumers," who were inclined a little to look 
 down on them. The Bernys were a num- 
 erous and important family in that part 
 of the world, whose strain had been un- 
 tainted by admixture of foreign blood at 
 least since the days of the Saracens, and 
 their Provencal type had subsisted in all 
 its purity. For two generations they had 
 made part of the bourgeoisie of Antibes. 
 Some old sea-dogs among their ancestors 
 had sailed away in quest of pelf and glory, 
 even as far as He de Bourbon and the 
 Indies, and thus it was that nomadic 
 instincts, transmitted by heredity and 
 inspiring fear and alarm in the bosoms of
 
 4 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 the mothers, sometimes manifested them- 
 selves among the young men and boys. 
 
 *As slowly and religiously she followed 
 the little brown angel with the white 
 dove's wings, the widowed mother was 
 reflecting on many matters, and even as she 
 gazed on him and her soul was filled with 
 delight and pride, her joy was marred by a 
 melancholy preoccupation. O, why the 
 impossibility of that sweet and childish 
 dream the dream that every mother fondly 
 cherishes of keeping him by her as she 
 beheld him now, a little boy with limpid 
 eyes and curly head ! O, why does the 
 future swallow up the present thus remorse- 
 lessly ! Soon there would be so many dif- 
 ficulties to be faced and conquered for the 
 sake of this wayward and charming little 
 creature, who, notwithstanding his baby 
 eyes, was already beginning to assume 
 mannish ways, who had troublesome freaks 
 and fancies now and then, and would run 
 away from home to play and roam the 
 fields till nightfall, no one knew where.
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 5 
 
 To give him an education equal to his 
 cousins, so much richer than he, what was 
 she to do, how was she to manage ? And 
 if he should refuse to work after all their 
 sacrifices, what would become of them ? 
 By this time she had ceased to smile, and 
 was heedless alike of the white-robed maid- 
 ens in the procession, the cheerful sunlight 
 and the fleeting present ; her mind was 
 dwelling exclusively on this one thought, 
 a little narrow, it may be, but so motherly 
 and that had been her guiding star through 
 life how could she manage to make of her 
 poor, penniless little Jean a man who should 
 be at least the equal of the other boys of 
 that proud Berny family.
 
 II 
 
 A BOY of ten or thereabout, with a man- 
 ner that indicated a superabundant fund 
 ,of energy and daring, already approaching 
 young manhood, but with the same babyish 
 expression and laughing limpidity in the 
 handsome eyes with their enframement of 
 black velvet, was walking slowly up and 
 down the beach at Antibes, accompanied 
 by three or four other urchins of his own 
 age, one of whom, four years ago, had also 
 figured as an angel in the procession of the 
 Fete-Dieu. 
 
 Perceiving a felucca stranded on the 
 flats, motionless and with a heavy list to 
 port, the little choppy blue waves of the 
 Mediterranean eddying and swirling around 
 her, they hurried off with the resolute and 
 knowing air of old sailors to lend a helping 
 hand, while the fishermen, baring their 
 
 6
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 1 
 
 swarthy legs, leaped overboard to pull 
 their vessel off. 
 
 It was a beautiful Easter Sunday. Jean 
 was wearing man's attire that day for the 
 first time, jacket and trousers, with a little 
 brown felt hat set off by a velvet ribbon, 
 which he wore very far back on his head, 
 sailor fashion. Attired in the same pretty, 
 brand new suit, he had attended high mass 
 that morning with his mother; and now 
 the time, longed for with such impatience, 
 had come, when he could be off and amuse 
 himself with his companions. 
 
 At evening, as was always the case, he 
 came in late to dinner, after a day spent in 
 roaming about the old port and climbing 
 over the ships. His new clothes were in a 
 sorry plight, notwithstanding the entreaties 
 and admonitions his mother had given him 
 that morning, and the little brown felt was 
 cocked all of one side over his tangled curls 
 and perspiring forehead. He w r as scolded 
 a little, but very gently, as was the case 
 always.
 
 8 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 Because it was a fete day and they were 
 to go out after dinner he did not change 
 his fine new suit before sitting down at 
 table. The fancy seizing him, he even 
 asked permission to wear the pretty, broad- 
 brimmed hat, than which life had nothing 
 more dear to him. The old grandfather, 
 who always took dinner with his daughter 
 Sundays, was there, too, as ever wearing 
 the black frock and white cravat that gave 
 to his semi-poverty an aspect of respect- 
 ability. And the twilight, the limpid, cre- 
 puscular light of springtime, shed its soft, 
 rosy splendor upon the homely board that 
 old Miette, the maid of all work, had spread 
 for the family for many a long year. 
 
 For all his love of fun and sport, which 
 was uppermost pretty constantly with him, 
 Jean loved them both well, mamma and 
 grandfather ; in his impulsive, fitful little 
 heart, that was too apt to forget what it 
 should have remembered, they had a safe, 
 warm corner, although it was sometimes 
 hard to find. And now, at that very
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 9 
 
 moment, in spite of his inattention and 
 absent-mindedness, in spite of the tantalizing 
 desire he felt to be out under the open sky, 
 a new picture of them was forming in his 
 mind, overlying and obliterating the more 
 ancient ones, a picture more lasting than 
 those that had gone before, and that in the 
 future would be cherished more fondly and 
 regretted more keenly. So, too, were en- 
 graved more deeply on the tablet of his mem- 
 ory the unprepossessing features of poor, 
 humble Miette, who had helped to rear him 
 and rocked his cradle when he was a baby ; 
 so, too, with every trivial detail about the 
 house, so Provencal in appearance, arrange- 
 ment and odors, where he first saw the 
 light. There are certain moments in our 
 life that seem to have in them nothing of 
 special import, nothing more or less than 
 the countless others of which we take no 
 note, and which yet become to us as land- 
 marks, milestones never to be forgotten amid 
 the swift flight of hurrying years. Thus 
 was it with that dinner hour at Eastertide
 
 10 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 for that small creature, so mere a child, who 
 doubtless had never until then known what 
 it was to think with such intensity and 
 unconscious profundity. And to that 
 impression, which had suddenly stamped 
 itself upon his mind in such vivid and 
 unfading colors, of his mother's loving, 
 anxious eyes, of the old grandfather's face, so 
 full of gentle resignation, rising above the 
 snow-white cravat, there came mingling 
 with the others for the always of human- 
 ity, that is to say, for all his lifetime a 
 host of secondary elements : his assumption 
 of man's attire, presage of greater liberty 
 and an adventurous life ; the color of the 
 new paper on the walls of the dining-room ; 
 some other inexpensive embellishments 
 about the premises of which he was very 
 proud ; the delightful prospect of a week's 
 vacation that lay before him ; the im- 
 pression of approaching summer, the 
 charm of those early splendors of protracted 
 twilight, of that period of the year when 
 they were first permitted to dine in the
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 11 
 
 expiring transparency of daylight, without 
 the lamp; and, finally, the multitude of 
 inexpressible small things that, taken to- 
 gether, formed a tenderly melancholy back- 
 ground for that happy evening. The gal- 
 lery of pictures that was formed there, 
 deep in his memory, and so closely linked 
 together that they could not be torn one 
 from another, might have been fitly styled 
 instantaneous photographs of an Easter 
 Sunday. 
 
 And all the while she, the mother, was 
 watching him with increasing anxiety, be- 
 holding him so absent and preoccupied, his 
 thoughts so far away from home and her ! 
 For a long time she had been cherishing an 
 idea, a fixed, fond plan, whereby she might 
 keep this only son of hers in Provence and 
 have him for a delight and prop to her 
 declining years ; an uncle, the only one of 
 the rich Bernys who had ever condescended 
 to notice his poor, handsome little nephew, 
 was one of the perfumers of the neighbor- 
 hood, or, in other words, he owned up on
 
 12 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR. 
 
 the mountain a factory where the heaps and 
 heaps of roses and geraniums that were 
 gathered in the fields about were made to 
 surrender by distillation their sweet odors ; 
 and he had promised to provide for Jean's 
 future, and ultimately make the business 
 over to him, if Jean, as he grew to man- 
 hood, showed himself obedient and indus- 
 trious. 
 
 But on that pleasant Easter evening her 
 melancholy and despair grew darker and 
 deeper as she saw with what fixed intensity 
 he gazed from out the open window upon 
 the port, crowded with white-winged ships 
 and swift feluccas darting here and there, 
 and beyond the broad stretch of deep blue 
 sea.
 
 Ill 
 
 Ox a bright, stiflingly hot afternoon late 
 in June, in a class-room into which the sun, 
 his daily course now almost ended, was 
 pouring floods of light, a tall, handsome 
 young fellow, of manly proportions, close- 
 buttoned in his tightly fitting collegian's 
 tunic, was indulging in a day-dream, all by 
 himself, his eyes filled with idle speculation. 
 
 The classes had been dismissed, the town 
 boys had gone to their homes, the others 
 were diverting themselves in a remote play- 
 ground. He, Jean, who was one of the few 
 boarders in this Provengal college of Mar- 
 istes, was enjoying this evening a brief 
 respite from his labors in recognition of his 
 name having appeared that day in the Offi- 
 cial Bulletin : Jean Berny, candidate for 
 the Naval School. And he had come to 
 13
 
 14 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 this class-room that he might be alone, and 
 reflect on the future of adventure that he 
 beheld before him. 
 
 His mother, it is unnecessary to state, 
 had abandoned all her cherished plans ; 
 since it was his wish, she had consented 
 that he should adopt that seafaring life 
 which she held in such dread and horror, 
 and, once the matter settled, that he might 
 pass successfully, had condemned herself 
 to a life of severe and unintermitting pri- 
 vation. 
 
 A candidate for the Borda ! And yet 
 he had been an idler and a drone, had 
 wasted his time and perpetrated every 
 description of boyish prank from beginning 
 to end of his schooldays, w r hile there at 
 home the mamma and grandfather, and old 
 Miette, too, in her humble way, were pinch- 
 ing themselves to pay his bills for board 
 and instruction. 
 
 But now that there was a chance of his 
 passing, he had said to himself that he 
 would turn to the best account he knew
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 15 
 
 how the two months that were left to him 
 before the dreaded final oral examination, 
 but he would grant himself a holiday for 
 this evening and the morrow, just to reflect 
 on matters a bit. 
 
 He had begun by setting down on the 
 first page of his exercise books, opposite 
 his name, the glorious and ever to be remem- 
 bered day of the week, month and year. 
 And now he was thinking of far distant 
 lands, whose shores were washed by strange 
 and unknown seas. 
 
 About him on every side the repose of the 
 dying day was descending on the old Marist 
 college; the empty rooms, the deserted 
 corridors were filled with the sonorous 
 silence of the summer evening; streaming 
 through the wide-open windows the golden 
 light of the declining sun penetrated every- 
 where, illuminating dark corners, casting a 
 warm splendor on the bare walls, roughly 
 smeared with yellow ochre, and in the blue 
 sky above clouds of dusky swallows were 
 wheeling, advancing, and receding, drunk
 
 16 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 with light and motion, and at every turn 
 in their swift flight hurling against the 
 silent college their shrill, strident cry. 
 
 And deep down in the recesses of Jean's 
 memory a picture was forming of this 
 summer evening and all these attending 
 circumstances as formerly of the dinner 
 at Eastertide another landmark, another 
 headland in the ocean of life, but this time 
 with more of the mysterious and foreign 
 in it, with more of vague, unexplained mel- 
 ancholy in the environment. 
 
 Until the hour when the first bats came 
 flitting forth in silence from beneath the 
 hot timbers of the old roof did he remain 
 there, tranquil and solitary, dreamily re- 
 flecting on the future and on the career 
 that was so near as almost to be within his 
 grasp. And the splendor of the atmos- 
 phere spoke to him of yellow sands and 
 glaring sunlight, of cities of the Orient, of 
 strands that man's foot had never pressed, 
 and, vaguely, too, of love.
 
 IV 
 
 IT is two months later at Antibes, about 
 the middle of vacation. 
 
 The time was at hand when the list of 
 appointments to the Naval School would 
 be made public. An atmosphere of po'ig- 
 nant expectation pervaded the little house, 
 on which the hot Provencal sun beat fiercely, 
 whither day after day, as soon as the Offi- 
 cial was received, came the grandfather to 
 say there was no news. Through some of 
 the wealthy Bernys who had grudgingly 
 consented to lend their influence, letters of 
 recommendation to the examiners had been 
 secured from some men of note and Jean's 
 mother was hopeful. It was, in a measure, 
 a question of life and death with him, how- 
 ever, for he would soon be seventeen, and 
 should he be rejected, admission to the 
 
 17
 
 18 JEANBERNY, SAILOR 
 
 Borda would evermore be inexorably 
 denied him. 
 
 As for him, the lack of interest he dis- 
 played was incomprehensible. Some new 
 notion, which alarmed and distressed his 
 relatives, seemed to have germinated in 
 that comely head of his, so thoughtless and 
 yet so stubborn, so difficult to guide aright, 
 for such utter unconcern was not to be 
 accounted for, even on the ground of his 
 extreme boyishness. It really seemed as 
 if a sailor's life had ceased to have attrac- 
 tions for him. But they both hung back 
 and refrained from questioning him, fearing 
 to know the worst. 
 
 He, however, now a young man grown, 
 boasting a silky mustache and wearing a 
 handsome English suit in place of the dis- 
 carded schoolboy's tunic, was almost con- 
 stantly away from home, and lingered, 
 love-making among the pretty girls, until 
 the night was far advanced. 
 
 And yet it was the self -same, frank, limpid 
 eyes, gray-blue in color, looking out from be-
 
 JEANBERNY, SAILOR 19 
 
 tween intensely black, curved lashes, the 
 eyes of the little angel of the Fete-Dieu, that 
 illuminated his face, now radiant with the 
 pride of manhood. And no one looking in 
 those eyes, so childishly irresponsible, but 
 at the same time so tender and so kindly, 
 could find it in his heart to chide him or 
 say an ungentle word to him. 
 
 And his eyes did not belie him ; he was 
 as affectionate and tender-hearted as their 
 expression denoted him to be, was this 
 rattle-pated Jean. For his mother and 
 grandfather, to whom he had been an al- 
 most constant source of anxiety, his love 
 amounted to adoration. If he was captious 
 and fretful with them at times, as was 
 often the case, the reason was that in his 
 eyes they still personified authority, against 
 which his untrained nature incessantly 
 rebelled. The better side of his disposition 
 he displayed to the poor and lowly, to old 
 Miette now and then, to little beggar boys, 
 to feeble old paupers, to suffering animals ; 
 and the house was always pervaded by
 
 20 JEANBERNY, SAILOR 
 
 three or four ugly, half-starved cats, that 
 it was comical to see him bring in tenderly 
 in his arms, after having saved them from 
 their appointed death by drowning. 
 
 One day the old grandfather, trim and 
 respectable as ever in his well-brushed 
 black frock, which, in order that his grand- 
 son might have the benefit of another tutor 
 was doing its second year's service, came in 
 later than usual, with a step more feeble and 
 tottering than was his wont. Miette, who 
 had been watching at the kitchen window 
 for his coming, alarmed to seehini with a news- 
 paper in his hand, hastily pulled to the shut- 
 ters as if to retard the dreaded moment when 
 the truth must Be known, seated herself, 
 her heart beating violently, and waited. 
 
 He entered, and when he had climbed 
 the stairs to the little first floor drawing- 
 room, called in a voice that was strangely 
 unlike his own : 
 
 "Henriette, my daughter, quick, come 
 here!"
 
 JEANBERNT, SAILOR 21 
 
 She came hurrying to him, panting 
 breathlessly. 
 
 " What is it ? He has been rejected, 
 hasn't he?" 
 
 "Well, yes yes, my daughter. At least 
 we shall have to think so, for here is the 
 Official, and his name does not appear in it." 
 
 " O my Lord, my God ! " was all the poor 
 mother said, wringing her hands, in a faint, 
 broken-hearted voice. And they sat there, 
 the old man and she, in silence, pressing 
 closely to each other's side, stricken dumb 
 by the wreck of all their earthly hopes. 
 There was nothing left for them to say ; 
 during those days of waiting and suspense 
 they had exhausted the subject in their 
 anxious colloquies, had looked this irreme- 
 diable disaster in the face and examined it 
 in all its consequences. What would he 
 do, that Jean to whom they had not found 
 courage to speak their mind, what effort 
 would he consent to make ? To maintain 
 him at school on an equality with his com- 
 panions, to preserve to the little house and
 
 22 JEANBERNT, SAILOR 
 
 to its inmates an outward show of respect- 
 ability, they had been reduced to the neces- 
 sity of becoming borrowers and had mort- 
 gaged the country property, the orange 
 trees and fields of roses that had been 
 handed down from father to son for genera- 
 tions. And now that the end for which 
 they had sacrificed their all was no longer, 
 and would never be, capable of attainment, 
 they could not see their way before them ; 
 no, in their lack of means to provide another 
 career for their son, they could not see 
 their way at all. Their life was shattered, 
 their small world seemed to them to be 
 drawing to an end. Forebodings of disas- 
 ter, inevitable and irretrievable, floated 
 before their mental vision, and, without well 
 knowing why, they looked upon their Jean 
 as one for whom there was no longer hope 
 in life. And as they continued to sit there 
 in mournful silence, it seemed to them that 
 over their poor home that they had loved 
 so well, that they had sacrificed so much 
 to save, there passed a chill wind, breath-
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 23 
 
 ing menace of dispersion and piecemeal 
 ruin. 
 
 And now to them came he, with the light 
 step of the thoughtless idler, in his button- 
 hole a red rose that a pretty girl who loved 
 him had placed there. 
 
 " O Monsieur Jean ! " said Miette, stand- 
 ing in the corridor, " come in, come in, quick. 
 Go up and see your poor mother and the 
 grandfather, who are above, awaiting 
 you." 
 
 " How ? What is the matter ? " he said 
 off-handedly, assuming his mannish air of 
 unconcern. The distress on Miette's face 
 had told him all. 
 
 He entered the unpretentious little draw- 
 ing-room, where, as the maid had said, they 
 were awaiting him, and toward which, 
 exchanging no word, they had heard him 
 coming up the stair. He came forward 
 with the embarrassed air and bearing of a 
 
 O 
 
 schoolboy detected in some trivial pecca- 
 dillo, with partly averted face, and in his
 
 24 JEANBERNT, SAILOR 
 
 soft, velvety eyes there was something, an 
 imperceptible smile, approaching bravado. 
 Of their deep distress he saw nothing. 
 For his own part, he was neither surprised 
 nor disappointed, for he had long since 
 ceased to hope, knowing as he did, better 
 than anyone else, how he had frittered away 
 his time up to the very last minute, and at 
 the oral examination had cut a sorry figure. 
 There had been five or six boys of his stamp 
 at the Marist college, who, looking forward 
 to the possibility of a failure, had mutually 
 pledged themselves to take service in the 
 merchant marine. The blue shirt had no 
 terrors for those lads; on the contrary, it 
 had an attraction and a charm for them, as 
 is the case with many a man who follows 
 the sea solely for the pleasure he derives from 
 sporting its distinctive costume. And dur- 
 ing the month of inactivity that the vacation 
 afforded him he had had time to perfect his 
 plans for the future, which had much com- 
 mon sense to commend them, and to accus- 
 tom himself in thought to his new and
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 25 
 
 laborious life. He would commence at the 
 foot of the ladder, as a common, plain 
 sailor-boy, and work his way up ; in this 
 way he would be obeying the bidding of 
 his maritime instincts, and, it might be, 
 would see more of the world and encounter 
 
 more thrilling adventures than in the 
 
 . 
 navy. . 
 
 " Pooh ! " he exclaimed, without looking 
 at the sheet which his grandfather's trem- 
 bling hand held out to him ; " what do I 
 care for their old Borda, since I shall be a 
 sailor all the same ! " 
 
 A sailor all the same. A common sea- 
 man, then, the career in all the world his 
 mother most disliked and dreaded ! He 
 announced his determination with the calm- 
 ness of unalterable resolution and therein 
 lay the secret of his tranquil unconcern, 
 that she had not until then succeeded in 
 divining. Falling on them in the midst of 
 their gloomy silence, this boyish utterance 
 was the resume and explanation of the 
 somber, mysterious things that tad been
 
 26 JEANBERNY, SAILOR 
 
 hanging in the air, the forebodings of ruin, 
 misery and death. 
 
 He looked them in the face, now, a thing 
 he had not dared to do when he first came 
 in. He looked at them with an air that 
 was firm and decided still, but was very 
 gentle, and grew gentler and gentler yet, 
 with an expression of melancholy on his 
 face that became more and more strongly 
 marked. A sudden light had flashed in on 
 his unreflective, happy-go-lucky mind ; all 
 the sacrifices that had been so carefully 
 kept hid from him, aL the pinching and 
 mute privation, he now divined for the 
 first time ; his love for them was swollen 
 by a sentiment that was new to him, one 
 of profound and tender compassion ; and as 
 he remarked the shiny spots that constant 
 wear had left on his grandfather's carefully 
 preserved coat, he felt himself melted and 
 subdued as by a supreme prayer. Had his 
 mother but asked him then he would have 
 renounced all his youthful dreams of adven- 
 ture; would have consented to all they
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 27 
 
 could have desired, embracing them the 
 while, and weeping hot tears. 
 
 But she did not read him rightly ; hurt 
 in her maternal pride, misjudging him and 
 his intentions, wounded and grieved in 
 every fiber of her being, she spoke to him 
 in accents of severity, at that crucial mo- 
 ment when his heart was overflowing with 
 tender sympathy for her. Then he hard- 
 ened himself in turn ; the eyes of the little 
 angel of the Fete-D'ieu, which had reap- 
 peared but now in all their soft limpidity, 
 became set and dry, and he left the room, 
 his determination now fixed beyond recall, 
 immutably. 
 
 As he passed through the hall down- 
 stairs, beholding old Miette weeping in an 
 agony of apprehension: " Cheer up ! Miette 
 mine," he cried, " don't grieve. This is not 
 the end of the business, don't you see. 
 There are plenty of other ways to be a sailor." 
 
 " How is that, Monsieur Jean ? " she 
 asked, lending an attentive and credulous 
 ear. " I thought it was all ended."
 
 28 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 Then he entered the neat kitchen and 
 sat down to tell her what he had planned. 
 Dissatisfied with himself at heart and op- 
 pressed by a sensation of melancholy that, 
 until then, he had been a stranger to, lack- 
 ing courage to go abroad and unable to 
 endure the thought of facing those in the 
 room above, he lingered long at her side. 
 "When J shall have served my time before 
 the mast, you see," he told her, " I will ship 
 with captains who make the long voyage ; 
 in that way I shall more quickly get a ship 
 of my own. I am just as well pleased, I 
 assure you, that matters have turned out 
 
 the way they have " and seeing that 
 
 she was looking at him and smiling 
 through her tears, he took her in his arms 
 and kissed her, lowly as she was, poor old 
 Miette.
 
 V 
 
 OCTOBER was drawing to an end in a 
 glory of tranquil sunshine. 
 
 The light that fell day by day on the 
 Berny residence was clear and bright as 
 ever, the heavens above were immutably 
 blue, but the little house was dark and 
 cheerless since the day that the great disap- 
 pointment had come within its door. 
 
 A rough sailor's kit shirts of coarse 
 linen, trousers and pea-jackets of stout, 
 serviceable cloth, which the women spoke 
 of in a whisper, with bated breath, and 
 showed to no one was being made ready, 
 with Miette's assistance, in the little dining- 
 room whose windows looked out upon the 
 sea. 
 
 The other Bernys, the rich uncles and 
 cousins, had been informed by Jean's grand- 
 39
 
 30 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 father, with an ill-feigned air of nonchalance, 
 of the decision that had been arrived at : 
 " Yes, we are going to let him serve aboard a 
 trading vessel for a while, so that he may 
 finish his apprenticeship as soon as possi- 
 ble, since his mind is bent on sailing in a 
 deep-water ship and seeing something of 
 the world. Perhaps our dear boy will 
 change his mind when he has had some 
 experience of the life ; in that case, we shall 
 be only too happy to direct him toward 
 another career. But, for the time being, his 
 inclination in that direction seems to be so 
 strong that his mother and I thought it our 
 duty not to thwart it." And then those 
 other Bernys, more insolently patronizing 
 than ever, and placing little confidence in 
 the future of the officer who has to work 
 for his living, wanted to know the name of 
 the ship in which he was to sail. 
 
 Oh, as for that, she was a very unassum- 
 ing little craft, hailing from the port of 
 Antibes the most convenient arrangement 
 they had been able to make to enable him
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 31 
 
 to come home to them once in a while a 
 small brig that was loading up for the 
 islands of the Levant with terra cotta jars 
 made at Vallauris. 
 
 In addition to his other mental suffering 
 the poor old man was cruelly afflicted in 
 his pride. For some twenty years now 
 his daughter Henrietta, by reason of her 
 slender fortune, had been unable to secure 
 complete recognition from that Berny 
 family of which she had become one by 
 marriage. From the time she was made a 
 widow and thrown on her own resources, 
 he had been uncomplainingly enduring a 
 constant martyrdom of concealed privation 
 for her sake, to the end that she might pre- 
 serve appearances, not discharge Miette, 
 not sell her house, and, above all, pay for 
 
 Jean's education at the Marist College in 
 
 ~ 
 
 Grasse. And now that grandson, that Jean 
 whom he adored in spite of all and perhaps 
 more tenderly than ever, as the end of his 
 life of sacrifice was drawing near, was 
 causing him this supreme humiliation, was
 
 32 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 going to be a common seaman before the 
 mast, a sailor-boy on board a " trader," as 
 the son of the meanest laborer or fisherman 
 of the port might have done. What availed 
 it to keep up the vain struggle, the hand- 
 to-mouth existence from day to day, what 
 availed anything. Now that he had ful- 
 filled the duty that respect for observances 
 imposed on him and had communicated to 
 the various members of the Berny family 
 the decision that had been reached, it 
 appeared to him that his usefulness in life 
 had departed and that he no longer had 
 any object to live for; he would have 
 wished to remain at home, in his own bare, 
 cheerless apartment, where the furniture 
 w T as dim and faded with age, and there lie 
 down and await the end. 
 
 But it was Sunday evening, the day 
 traditionally devoted to dining with his 
 daughter ; he roused up a bit at the thought, 
 and said to himself that he would dress and 
 make ready to go the more that this Sun- 
 day would bethelast before Jean's departure.
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 33 
 
 He felt old, broken-down and weary as 
 he had never felt before. And when, 
 before going out upon the street where his 
 acquaintance saluted him more cavalierly 
 than in the past, he began from force of 
 habit to brush the poor old black frock 
 that had done him such long and faithful 
 service, a fit of discouragement came over 
 him, for that as for all the rest ; in the 
 sentiment of his only grandson's disgrace 
 his appearance, to which he had always 
 devoted such jealous care in the midst of 
 want and privation, his appearance, to-day, 
 seemed to him a matter of little moment. 
 And tears rose to his dim, lusterless eyes 
 those old man's tears that are more 
 bitter than others, and flow unwillingly 
 from their exhausted spring. 
 
 Jean, for his part, let the days go by in 
 loitering aimlessly and building castles in 
 the air, with a vague melancholy, now for 
 the first time noticeable there, in his eyes 
 that had at times a look of vacancy and in
 
 34 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 his gentler manner. He remained at home 
 much more than he had been used to do, 
 and the port ceased to have attractions 
 now that he had the certain assurance of 
 soon being one of those who go down to 
 the sea in ships. He hung about the 
 house, casting lingering looks on the old 
 familiar spots and thinking. Or he would 
 betake himself, alone and solitary, to the 
 old ancestral country place and shut him- 
 self in the untended garden, where chrysan- 
 themums and autumnal asters overran the 
 walks, and there spend hours communing 
 with his thoughts, while lizards sported 
 on the gray wall and golden oranges hung 
 from the trees in the October sunlight. 
 His boyhood was ending with the summer ; 
 with the glory of that sun, already declin- 
 ing to the south and presaging the approach 
 of winter's melancholy days, would pass 
 away his happy, careless youth ; he felt this 
 keenly, with an impression of terror and 
 regret never experienced before. 
 
 While thus awaiting the time of his de-
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 35 
 
 parture his mind did not pursue a fixed, 
 consecutive train of thought, but gave itself 
 
 O * O 
 
 up more and more to vague fancies and 
 dreams of distant lands. He read much, 
 also, during the long idleness that was so 
 rapidly drawing to an end, and his choice 
 of books or rather of disconnected pas- 
 sages of books that, disdainfully putting 
 aside all others, he selected for the charm 
 they exercised on his imagination, indi- 
 cated, as did his long eyes and pure pro- 
 file, diffused transmitted Oriental tenden- 
 cies. He was a compound of irreclaimable 
 boyishness, physical exuberance, rude sim- 
 plicity and unconscious, unfathomable 
 poetry. In the course of his miscellaneous 
 reading he had come across, with the im- 
 pression that they were not new to him, 
 some of those visionary rhapsodies on the 
 dead Orient that have become classic 
 splendors, and he read them over and over 
 in the silence of the sunlit garden, thrilling, 
 each time he did so, with the sentiment of 
 mystery that they evoked.
 
 36 JEAN BEENT, SAILOR 
 
 It was an evening of the long-gone ages. The 
 golden domes of Benares, at news of the death of 
 the Star Sourya, phoenix of the world, wept 
 tears of precious stones 
 
 Words had a strange faculty of soothing 
 and charming him. Simple allocutions 
 like " once upon a time " or " it came to pass 
 that in the days of " that constitute such 
 an important portion of the story-teller's 
 mental equipment, would produce in him a 
 melancholy intoxication, like the faint per- 
 fume of a sarcophagus. 
 
 Egypt, Egypt ! the dung of birds defiles the 
 shoulders of thy great unchanging gods, and the 
 wind of the desert bears on its wings the ashes of 
 thy dead 
 
 And so, in that patrimonial domain, under 
 the oranges that the fading sunlight touched 
 with gold, among the chrysanthemums and 
 purple asters and all the rank, uncared-for 
 growths that chill autumn had breathed 
 on with its withering breath, he thought of
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 37 
 
 those seaports of the Levantine islands on 
 which he was soon to set his eyes, and of 
 E^ypt and its deserts of yellow sand, and 
 of millennial India.
 
 VI 
 
 THEIR last Sunday evening dinner was 
 eaten in silence ; it consisted of the same 
 traditional dishes, served, according to im- 
 memorial usage, by old Miette, who said 
 not a word, for her heart, too, was heavy, 
 and tears were ready to fall. 
 
 All through the repast Jean was beset 
 by the haunting memory of a certain Easter 
 dinner that had formed a sort of epoch in 
 his boyhood's life, and, when looked back 
 on afterward across the intervening years, 
 appeared to him surrounded by a mysteri- 
 ous aureole of glory. There were the little 
 brown felt hat and the newly assumed 
 man's attire ; the softly transparent light 
 and all the signs of early spring, seen 
 through the open window ; from all things 
 there exhaled an impression of freshness, 
 
 38
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 39 
 
 of newness, of the cool, rosy dawn of open- 
 ing life. Now, on the other hand, there 
 was an undefined presentiment, inexpres- 
 sibly sad, of swiftly approaching end and 
 darkness coming down, joined to the phys- 
 ical sensation of winter caused by the 
 increasing cold and the earlier shutting in 
 of night. 
 
 When he had finished his dessert of 
 grapes, and rose to go for his customary 
 evening walk about the town, spiritlessly, 
 however, and as if asrainst his will, his 
 
 f O / 
 
 grandfather said to him : " Remain, my 
 child, if you please ; we have something 
 we wish to say to you." 
 
 A darkling look rose swiftly to his face ; 
 he remained standing, with head lowered, 
 ready with his defense, fearing there was to 
 be an attempt to make him renounce the 
 sailor's calling, a final attack of argument 
 and entreaty with a design, perhaps, to 
 induce him to enter the service of his uncle, 
 the perfumer. 
 
 But the grandfather went on in a slow,
 
 40 JEAN BERN?, SAILOR 
 
 sad voice of resignation, speaking of things 
 he had not thought to hear, and that fell, 
 one by one, heavy as drops of lead, upon 
 his heart : 
 
 " My child, you are approaching man's 
 estate, and I have thought it fitting that I 
 should render my account, in order that 
 you may know that from this time you 
 have no one to depend on but yourself. 
 
 "My child your mother and I have 
 nothing, almost nothing left. 
 
 " We thought it our duty to keep you 
 at college with the Marists, and to that 
 end borrowed considerable sums of 
 money which are unfortunately secured 
 by a mortgage on our old country place of 
 Carigou. As long as I live and draw my 
 pension, the amount of which is known to 
 you, we shall be able, perhaps thanks to 
 the untiring economy of your mother and 
 this good girl we shall be able, perhaps, 
 to keep our dear house to which you are 
 as deeply attached as we. But after that, 
 what then ? " His voice, which broke con-
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 41 
 
 tinually, had in it the feeble quaver of 
 great age, which Jean had never remarked 
 before and which it gave him inexpressi- 
 ble pain to hear. And when he had con- 
 cluded his final sentence : " God grant, my 
 son, God in his mercy grant that I may 
 live to see the day when you shall be able 
 to earn your living and your mother's. 
 For the thought of seeing her compelled 
 to work hurts me, you see, hurts me horri- 
 bly " when he had concluded, convulsive 
 
 movements agitated his shoulders beneath 
 the thin-worn cloth of his poor shabby 
 Sunday coat, and his eyes, that had beheld 
 the light for eighty years, twitched with 
 distress in a way that was most pitiful. 
 
 He had already suspected something of 
 the poor old grandfather's sacrifices and 
 self-humiliation, had divined the increasing 
 penury at home, where nevertheless such 
 decent order was maintained. But that, 
 no. It was too much ; it exceeded the 
 limits of all he had ever considered possi- 
 ble ; to be destitute of everything, the old
 
 42 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 place and the town house sold to strangers 
 and his mother working to gain her 
 daily bread ! 
 
 Gradually, while his aged relative con- 
 tinued to talk on in his feeble, trembling 
 voice, these bitter truths impressed them- 
 selves upon his mind, so often empty and 
 thoughtless, and fixed themselves there 
 indelibly as if seared on it with a red-hot 
 iron. Then he threw himself upon their 
 bosoms, weeping hot tears, as children 
 weep, possessed by an overmastering yearn- 
 ing to embrace and console those dear 
 ones and also to ask them for protection, 
 for their protection and their counsel in 
 the presence of disaster. 
 
 But his mother shed no tear ; she held 
 him clasped to her bosom, forgetful of all 
 beside for the time being, and desiring 
 nothing save that she might be allowed to 
 hold him thus. The misapprehension, the 
 icy barrier that for the last two months 
 had kept than asunder, had ceased to 
 exist, and all the rest was as nothing in
 
 JEAN BERNY. SAILOR 43 
 
 comparison with this unspeakable delight 
 of finding her boy once more, and forgiv- 
 ing, and knowing she still had his love. 
 
 Besides, more plebeian than her father, 
 doubtless by reason of tendencies inherited 
 from some forgotten progenitor who lived 
 in times long-past, she felt herself now the 
 braver, the calmer and more resolute of 
 the two, when brought face to face with 
 the probability of ruin ; if it became nec- 
 essary to work, why, then she would work ; 
 she would leave the country, that was all 
 there was about it, and follow her Jean 
 wherever his duty might call him ; sailor 
 or officer, it was all the same ; he would 
 still be her Jean, her stay, her prop, her 
 life and only joy, and when she held him 
 pressed to her bosom the world had noth- 
 ing to offer her that she desired.
 
 VII 
 
 AFTER the conversation of that evening 
 a more cheerful feeling and somewhat of 
 hope prevailed in the little house. After 
 all, regard being had to the impossibility 
 of persuading him to take up other studies, 
 his plan for the future was about as good 
 as any that could be devised, and the years 
 before the mast would slip away and 
 quickly be forgotten. 
 
 His calculation was : In two years I shall 
 be an able seaman, and three years after 
 that I can apply for a certificate empower- 
 ing me to command a merchantman ; in 
 five years I shall be earning a good living 
 and in a position to assist mother and 
 grandfather; we shall all be happy once 
 more and the dark days will be forgotten. 
 He formed many good resolutions for his 
 future guidance, he would work hard and 
 44
 
 JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 45 
 
 be very prudent, and his thoughtless 
 gayety came back to him, his boyishness 
 and jovial laugh. 
 
 He never left the house, however, except 
 in their company. On those evenings, the 
 last they were to be together, the three of 
 them would go out to take the air, decently 
 dressed in their best attire, as if by their 
 appearance to assert their dignity in the 
 eyes of those whom they encountered ; 
 the old grandfather, carrying himself very 
 erect, neat as a pin with his carefully 
 brushed coat and immaculate neck cloth, 
 Jean in his handsome English suit that he 
 was soon to wear no more, faultlessly 
 gloved and having his mother on his arm, 
 the picture of a methodical, staid young 
 man.
 
 . VIII 
 
 AMONG the mists and fogs of early 
 November the little brig was bounding 
 over the billows, careening before the 
 freshening breeze. A low, monotonous, 
 humming sound accompanied her like the 
 rustling of silk, or very soft tissue paper 
 crumpled in the hand less a sound than a 
 manifestation of silence peculiar to the 
 time and place. 
 
 Antibes was vanishing in the distance, 
 showing like a small speck of yellow that 
 momentarily grew less and less at the base 
 of the overhanging snow-clad Alps, which, 
 on the other hand, seemed to tower larger 
 and more confusedly against the back- 
 ground of leaden sky. 
 
 Jean, a sailor two hours old, in heavy 
 boots and thick pea-jacket, was doing his 
 
 46
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 47 
 
 best to maintain Ms equilibrium on the 
 brig's sloping deck, his eyes big with 
 wonder at the novelty of it all. It was 
 subject of uneasiness to him to be thus soli- 
 tary among strangers, on those few frail 
 planks that seemed endowed with life and 
 were flying from the world of. his acquaint- 
 ance; he was awed by the melancholy 
 waste of immensity that surrounded him 
 on every hand, and became with each suc- 
 ceeding moment more grand and somber. 
 
 The others of the crew were there as 
 well, watching like him, but with emotions 
 of a different and lower order, the receding 
 land, where their stay had been longer 
 than usual and the restraints and enforced 
 sobriety of sea life had been relaxed. 
 These, Jean's new companions, were six in 
 number: a Maltese, black as an Arab, 
 ragged, exposing his bare chest to the 
 keen evening breeze ; a brace of sturdy 
 rascals from Provence ; a roaming vagabond 
 of Bordeaux ; and a deserter from the navy, 
 who was careful how he showed his face
 
 48 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 in French seaports. All, together with 
 their sea togs, had assumed the look of 
 endurance and impassiveness that is char- 
 acteristic of the sailor. 
 
 While they were hanging about the deck 
 inactive the captain made his appearance 
 aft, a stern, grave man of colossal pro- 
 portions, whose hair was beginning to be 
 tinged with gray, with dull, lifeless eyes 
 void of all speculation. He gave a com- 
 mand in a hoarse voice, couched in lan- 
 guage that was so much Greek to Jean, 
 and as the young man, novice-like, not 
 knowing what to do, smiled and seemed to 
 take the matter as a joke, he soon heard 
 himself recalled to duty in stern, harsh 
 language. He looked at his coiniriander 
 and the smile disappeared from his face; 
 he did not see how there could be such a 
 difference as existed between this man and 
 the one who, only a short while before, 
 had received him at Antibes with such a 
 politely deferential tone, when he came on 
 board, accompanied by his handsomely
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 49 
 
 dressed mother and stately old grand- 
 father. 
 
 A feeling of discouragement rose to our 
 sailor-boy's mind at the reflection that he 
 was the inferior, or at best only the equal, 
 of those beino-s with whom his lot was 
 
 O 
 
 cast, and that henceforth he was to render 
 blind obedience to the mandates of his 
 captain. He was oppressed by a horrible 
 sensation of abasement; at a single blow, 
 there in the gathering night, he felt the 
 galling yoke of servitude riveted about 
 his neck.
 
 IX 
 
 DAYS succeeded, each like the other, 
 toilsome and joyless, days of which no 
 one could tell the name, forming weeks 
 and months that no one took the pains to 
 count: a time that seemed long in the 
 present, but in the retrospect appeared 
 very brief. 
 
 For days they would sail over solitary 
 seas, then would put in at some unfre- 
 quented port in Corsica or Italy. The jars 
 of Vallauris had been shipped merely with 
 a view to blinding the authorities and were 
 landed at Leghorn ; there were nocturnal 
 
 O ' 
 
 departures and mysterious maneuvers as 
 to which no one dared to ask questions. 
 They were as clay in the hands of the 
 potter, and yielded mute obedience to the 
 man who controlled their destinies. 
 
 In these furtive stoppages, which were 
 50
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 51 
 
 for the most part made off lonely beaches, 
 where there were no wharves or other facili- 
 ties for landing, the crew were compelled 
 to do the work of common laborers ; bare- 
 footed through the briny water, over the 
 deep sand and jagged rocks, they had to 
 carry heavy burdens, sacks and bales of 
 which the contents were unknown to them. 
 But Jean, because there was no one to see 
 him in those wild retreats, accomplished his 
 task with no sense of humiliation ; he felt, 
 moreover, that this occupation, like all 
 rough and dangerous callings that carry 
 little profit with them, had a certain aspect 
 of nobility and grandeur. And then, too, 
 this active physical exercise which fatigues 
 and fortifies the body while quieting the 
 mind suited him. At evening only, when 
 niorht was closing- in, out on the broad ocean 
 
 O O ' 
 
 or in some sequestered bay, did memories 
 of the past return to sadden him. 
 
 Through all sorts of weather the stout 
 little smuggler craft, old already and bear- 
 ing many a scar, tore onward in spite of all ;
 
 52 
 
 thrashing through the boisterous, ugly seas, 
 scourged by the icy mistral that stung the 
 men's faces like a needle. " She is my only 
 dependence," the captain once said in his 
 raucous voice, "and I have five children 
 at home. She has got to go or else go 
 under ! " It was for Jean's benefit that this 
 explanatory statement the only one that 
 was ever heard to issue from his mouth- 
 was made ;- he was beginning to manifest a 
 sort of interest and friendly inclination for 
 his new hand, of which the latter was proud. 
 Owing to the uncertainty that attended 
 their movements, it was only at remote 
 intervals that he received letters from 
 Antibes; the same envelope always en- 
 closed the handwriting of the two beings 
 dearest to him on earth his mother's and 
 that of the old grandsire, constantly more 
 tremulous in his declining years. He had 
 a box in which he kept them, as if they 
 had been holy relics, in the securest corner 
 of his clamp little locker. They constituted 
 his sole treasure on the vessel, where he
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 53 
 
 lived in the same squalor and privation as 
 the meanest of the crew. 
 
 Sometimes it chanced that a day of re- 
 pose was granted them ; they had to kill 
 time as best they could in some dreary, 
 lifeless village or unfrequented bay. On 
 such occasions Jean, before going ashore, 
 would always put on his best clothes, 
 which no longer fitted him, being too small 
 for his increasing proportions, and had lost 
 their original freshness of color owing to 
 being laid away so long in the dampness. 
 He would have no one with him in his 
 strolls, and for a few brief hours would 
 once more be the boy of other days, loi- 
 tering in the old garden at Carigou, dream- 
 ing long dreams, and giving his fancy leave 
 to roam unchecked. He would walk 
 straight ahead without definite aim or ob- 
 ject, meditatively observing strange things 
 and places in his dreamy way, exchanging 
 a look or smile with the girls he met, 
 blondes or brunettes, as might be, now and 
 then inaugurating a passing flirtation,
 
 54 JEANBERNY, SAILOR 
 
 which, in those localities, came to nothing, 
 but served to trouble his peace of mind. 
 He preferred the toils and perils of the 
 deep to those days of idleness and reflec- 
 tion, which only brought his future too 
 distinctly before his eyes. Distractions of 
 this kind were very brief, however, and very 
 rare ; and then they were so quickly for- 
 gotten and dismissed, barely leaving behind 
 them in his memory a portrait of the young 
 girl, which, for a few evenings, would re- 
 turn just as slumber was descending. 
 
 But for these infrequent respites his 
 home was on the sea, the sea always and 
 in spite of all, be the weather what it 
 might, buffeting the white-fringed waves, 
 struggling against the icy mistral.
 
 X 
 
 THUS passed the winter. 
 
 A period of delight, almost of enchant- 
 ment, was the visit they paid in May to the 
 Isle of Rhodes. 
 
 Just at the close of the wintry season, 
 which was longer and more severe that 
 year than usual, their poor little craft, that 
 seemed no less than her crew to be in need 
 of refreshment and repose, put into the 
 port of Khancljiotas. The change in lati- 
 tude, their descent toward the sunny South, 
 which is in itself a sovereign distraction to 
 men's minds, was coincident with the sud- 
 den coming of the spring, the springtime 
 of the Orient. Jean could not remain un- 
 affected by the magic of that Levant for 
 which he had so longed, of which he had 
 dreamed so fondly in his distant home, 
 beneath the orange trees of the old garden 
 
 55
 
 56 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 at Antibes, and which now presented itself 
 to his eyes in all its tranquil and desolate 
 splendor. 
 
 Their repairs would necessitate a stay at 
 the island of a month ; a sufficient time 
 almost to become acclimated and also to 
 fall in love. 
 
 The first day was devoted to airing the 
 hold and emptying the moldy lockers of 
 their contents; articles of apparel were 
 hung to dry in the rigging, exposed to the 
 warm breeze, and it seemed as if the little 
 vessel itself shared the general joy at being 
 there, and was glad to have a chance to 
 rest and bask in the bright sunshine. 
 
 Oh, the exquisite charm of that first 
 evening, so limpidly tranquil, redolent 
 of strange odors! Jean's duties did not 
 permit him to leave the vessel, but no 
 sooner was his day's work ended than he 
 leaped ashore and seated himself, almost 
 in a recumbent posture, on the ruinous 
 quay, that was soon to become such a 
 familiar object to him. In the attire of the
 
 JEAN BEENT, SAILOR 57 
 
 humble calling he had adopted, he real- 
 ized, with a voluptuous pleasure, tinged 
 with unutterable melancholy, the fruition 
 of his dream of childhood ; he contemplated 
 the sky ablaze with golden light, and the 
 city whose dead slumberousness was veiled 
 in an atmosphere of gold ; the Orient was 
 revealed to him, more Oriental and more 
 alien than he had ever dreamed of, in the 
 ensemble of things, and in their thousand 
 details and, more than in all besides, in 
 the great forbidding walls that formed an 
 impenetrable barrier to the human life and 
 activity within. 
 
 And while he was reclining there alone 
 a young girl appeared she was a Greek or 
 Syrian, therefore unveiled who was to 
 him the embodiment of all that Orient. 
 She w r as very young, with heavy, intensely 
 black eyes, and her henna-stained hair was 
 of an unnatural, fiery red. She advanced 
 with a hesitating step, then, perceiving the 
 reclining sailor, crossed over toward the 
 vessel and walked along the row of flag-
 
 58 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 stones that formed the coping of the quay 
 to obtain a nearer view. Her long eyes, 
 black as blackest night and half -closed 
 between their fringe of dark lashes, half- 
 concealed by the red locks that straggled 
 from beneath her spangled head-dress, shot 
 inquisitive glances at Jean's blue, wide-open 
 eyes and black hair. She smiled and went 
 her way, slowly as she had come, with an 
 undulating motion of the hips that was in 
 harmony with her supple form.
 
 XI 
 
 SHE came every evening now at the 
 beautiful golden twilight hour, and all the 
 long day Jean thought of nothing but her 
 coming. His day's work done, quick, he 
 plunged into the clear, cold water, dressed, 
 adjusted his woolen beret becomingly over 
 his close-cropped hair, and then, with a 
 lover's eagerness, jumped from the deck 
 to the stone quay, there to smoke his Turk- 
 ish cigarette and wait for her arrival ; and 
 suddenly she would appear above him in 
 the distance, at the end of a steep path, 
 where the old frowning walls formed an 
 angle. She would come to him, making 
 her way downward from the old quarter of 
 the town, casting anxious looks behind her 
 
 ' O 
 
 as if in fear of being followed ; stepping 
 
 59
 
 60 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 leisurely, she would draw near, bold in her 
 innocence, ignorant of the danger that lies 
 in loving. 
 
 O 
 
 Jean would not stir, but wait for her to 
 conie to him. With a smile on her lips she 
 would stop, give him a flower, a cluster of 
 orange blossoms, or the common rose of the 
 East that is so deliciously fragrant ; some- 
 times she would address him a few words 
 in her mongrel French: how long would 
 he remain at Khandjiotas ? Where would 
 he go next ? and then would pass on with 
 a saucy laugh upon her face, negativing 
 with vehement gestures of indignation or 
 entreaty any attempt of his to follow 
 her. 
 
 He was never his own master until night, 
 and as the town was Turkish, it was a 
 matter of course that as soon as it became 
 dark the gates were shut tight and fast. 
 What could he do under those circum- 
 stances ? 
 
 Not only did she embody for him the 
 charm of the country that so deliciously
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 61 
 
 disturbs the senses, but it even seemed 
 as if those fleeting interviews and brief 
 
 O 
 
 smiles were symbolical of Jean's future life 
 of unrealized aspirations and ephemeral
 
 XII 
 
 Two weeks later they were making 
 appointments to meet each other in a retired 
 spot, half an hour after her appearance on 
 the quay, when it was almost night. She 
 allowed him to steal a kiss and would 
 return it, but nothing more, and would run 
 from him and seek shelter behind the great 
 gray walls, threatening to return no more. 
 And he, knowing it to be impossible to 
 find her should she choose to hide, and 
 fearing to lose her, would let her go. " If 
 you were going to stay here," said she, " or 
 if you even expected .to return, why, 
 then But he could give her no 
 
 assurance that he would return ; he was as 
 ignorant as she of what the morrow had in 
 store for him ; poor tyro on board a smug- 
 gling craft, penniless, unable to call his soul 
 his own, what plans could he make for the 
 
 62
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 63 
 
 future ? He was entirely at the mercy of 
 the dark and mysterious man who was in 
 command, and could say or promise nothing. 
 That being the case he had perforce to 
 remain satisfied with whatever favors his 
 red-haired girl chose to grant him.
 
 XIII 
 
 JUNE came in with all its dazzling 
 splendor, and the day of departure from 
 the island was close at hand. Three, per- 
 haps four, more of their stolen meetings, 
 then all would be ended between them, 
 doubtless forever. While reflecting on 
 their parting and telling himself that the 
 joy of conquest would remain forever 
 incomplete, he felt within him that unfath- 
 omable sensation of sadness that is con- 
 nected in some inscrutable manner with 
 things purely physical. And the Orient, of 
 which that girl stood as the personification 
 to his imagination, cast its immense poetic 
 glamour on his fleshly regrets. 
 
 But there came a letter from Antibes, 
 silencing his regrets and changing every- 
 thing. 
 
 64
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 65 
 
 The handwriting was his mother's, hers 
 alone. The dear old grandfather was veiy 
 ill, she said. And from her manner of ex- 
 pressing herself, as if to prepare him for the 
 worst, he saw that the case was very seri- 
 ous a very different matter and more irre- 
 mediable, doubtless, than the departure from 
 Rhodes. Then, as the memory of the poor 
 old man, in his white neckcloth and black 
 frock coat, rose to his mind, his heart grew 
 very heavy ; more poignantly than ever he 
 reproached himself with all the suffering he 
 had caused him, the bitter disappointment 
 that he had inflicted on him at the time he 
 went away. And he thought with affright 
 of the long distance that lay between them, 
 of the time it would take him to return by 
 sail, of the intentions of the close-mouthed 
 captain, who would likely wish to break 
 the voyage at intervening ports. It filled 
 him with anguish and despair to be so 
 utterly insignificant and helpless, to be 
 without money to make his way home by 
 the swift mail route, to be powerless to
 
 66 JEANBERNT, SAILOR 
 
 hasten his return to him who perhaps was 
 doomed to die. 
 
 And that Orient, that had so charmed him, 
 now suddenly appeared to him as a deathly 
 sarcophagus of gold, in which he was impri- 
 soned and of which he could not raise the lid. 
 She was indifferent to him now, he almost 
 hated her, the handsome girl who came 
 down to him at eventide from the old 
 walled city, and the kisses that he had 
 not the courage to withhold were joy- 
 less, bitter to the taste, and troubled by 
 remorse. 
 
 Until then the possibility that he might 
 sometime lose his grandfather had never 
 occurred to him, as is commonly the case 
 with children who have never seen Death 
 strike down without warning those near 
 and dear to them ; seeing him always active 
 and erect, always the same, and having all 
 his life known him as he was then, Jean 
 had not reflected that he was a very old 
 man. His existence appeared to him as 
 something stable and immovable, which he
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 67 
 
 considered in much the same light that he 
 did their house at Antibes, as a nest that 
 was wholly his and could jaever be taken 
 from him.
 
 . XIV 
 
 HE arrived at Antibes in the subsequent 
 month of July, having received no further 
 advices in the intervening time. The taci- 
 turn captain, who was well disposed toward 
 him, allowed him to go ashore immediately, 
 without detaining him to assist in the labors 
 necessitated by their arrival in port. And 
 in the same suit that he had worn when he 
 went away, neatly brushed, but yellow now 
 with age and much too small for him, he 
 made his way through the city of his birth 
 with a humility that was new to him, turn- 
 ing to look at no one, unmindful of his 
 faded garments and appearance nearly indi- 
 cative of poverty. 
 
 Antibes lay silent in the fierce, blinding 
 sunshine. Quick, quick, Jean hastened to 
 
 68
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 69 
 
 the house with all the speed he was capable 
 of, feeling his legs giving way beneath him 
 in his impatient anxiety, trembling as he 
 had never trembled before on coming home. 
 
 The door of the house was ajar, and just 
 within it was the screen of muslin that in 
 hot countries is universally used to keep 
 out the flies. Miette, standing there in the 
 cool, dark corridor, said to him : " Ah, 
 Monsieur Jean ! " in a tone that chilled his 
 blood, that suddenly brought to his memory 
 the tone in which she had addressed him 
 on the day when he failed in his examina- 
 tion for the Naval School. 
 
 " Grandfather ? " he asked in a low, be- 
 seeching voice, as if he had lost ten years 
 of his life were a child almost. " Where 
 is grandfather ? " 
 
 The groan that answered his question 
 told him all. His mother had heard him 
 and came down from the room above ; they 
 met on the stairs, and for a long time 
 remained locked in each other's arms, and 
 she wept in silence, saying nothing, because
 
 70 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 she saw that he had encountered Miette 
 and knew all. 
 
 With a buzzing in his head as of one 
 who has sustained a great shock, he ascended 
 with his mother to their little first floor 
 drawing-room. A shabby-looking man was 
 there, dressed in a shiny black frock coat, 
 and on the table were displayed some silver, 
 forks and spoons, arranged in pairs. 
 
 " Veiy well, then ; take them at your 
 price, monsieur," said the mother, impatient, 
 now her boy was there, to conclude the 
 business she had begun. 
 
 Then, while the two stood looking on in 
 silence with unutterable regret depicted on 
 their faces, the man placed a roll of bank- 
 notes on the table and pocketed the forks 
 and spoons, their family silver, marked 
 with the graudsire's monogram, that had 
 done service at their dinners in the old 
 bygone days. 
 
 And as soon as he had left the room she 
 caught her son by the hands : 
 
 " Yes, my poor child, I had to sell those
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR VI 
 
 things, and all beside will have to go 
 all, all the house and garden, everything, 
 all that we possess ! His pension helped 
 me to live but now that he is gone I 
 can no more ! " She spoke a little discon- 
 nectedly, like one whose wits were wander- 
 ing, her mind apparently not fixed on the 
 terrible things she was saying, which 
 nevertheless had caused her long hours of 
 agonized despair for she was distracted 
 by Jean's presence, by the joy of having 
 him at her side, of contemplating him, 
 admiring him, so handsome, so tall and 
 strong. 
 
 He cast himself into his mother's arms 
 and rested his cheek upon her shoulder, as 
 if to seek comfort there and protection 
 against the calamity that threatened to 
 overwhelm and crush them.
 
 XV 
 
 THE three succeeding months were a 
 period of deepest misery and distress to 
 them, pervaded by a horrible sensation of 
 suspense ; one of those periods during 
 which one can apply himself to nothing, 
 has courage to undertake nothing what 
 availed it even to keep in order the poor 
 dear house that was soon to be taken from 
 them 
 
 Lawyers and men of business were com- 
 ing and going constantly. She had tried, 
 reluctantly and with a sense of humilia- 
 tion, to enlist the sympathies of the other 
 Bernys and prevail on them to help her a 
 little and save her the necessity of parting 
 with the home of her fathers. But the 
 rich cousins declared it would be no less 
 than madness, that it would only be bring- 
 ing more complete ruin down upon her 
 73
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 73 
 
 head, that it would be best to sell, put her 
 affairs in shape, and get the matter ended. 
 And she sold. 
 
 When the irrevocable step was decided 
 on the days seemed to fly by with greater 
 swiftness, as in those evil dreams where 
 time has no duration. 
 
 And the evening of the day that wit- 
 nessed the signing of the deed, when they 
 were seated together before the family 
 board, the dinner, served as ever by old 
 Miette, was to them as a funeral repast, 
 their evening as one devoted to watching 
 by the bedside of a corpse. 
 
 Her plans were fully decided on : since 
 Jean, whose eighteenth year was now at 
 hand, must seek employment in his voca- 
 tion, and as she herself must toil, must 
 lead the life of a workingwoman, then the 
 further from Antibes they were the better 
 it would be; they would put the whole 
 width of France between them and their 
 old home ; she would go and settle with 
 him in some one of the northern seaport
 
 H JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 towns. Toulon was too near; she had 
 acquaintances there, and then, too, Jean 
 would have to spend at least a year at 
 Brest, on board the naval training ship. 
 At Brest, therefore, they would go and 
 live, where their poverty would escape 
 invidious comment. 
 
 It was in October that the new owner 
 gave them a week to remove their belong- 
 ings from the house and prepare for their 
 departure. As soon as they were gone 
 workmen were to come in and tear up 
 everything, replacing old with new; noth- 
 ing of all that the departing exiles had 
 loved so well was fine enough for these 
 fastidious successors. So they applied 
 themselves to selecting those poor things 
 that they were most attached to ; but when 
 it came to choosing, behold ! they were 
 attached to everything ; no object was so 
 valueless that they did not feel a pang at 
 leaving it behind. And still they must be 
 content to carry away so little ! 
 
 Jean helped his mother, relieving her of
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 75 
 
 the more laborious work and making pack- 
 ing cases for the goods that were to be 
 forwarded by the freight train. Each morn- 
 ing he would awake in the little chamber 
 of his boyhood and say to himself in bit- 
 terness of spirit : " Yet another day nearer 
 to that when I shall look on this for the 
 last time ! " And the house was being 
 gradually emptied of its contents the 
 house that they no longer took pains 
 to sweep and set in order, that was littered 
 with the straw of the packing cases. The 
 wonted aspect of the place was destroyed 
 beyond the possibility of recognition. 
 
 He packed away with loving care a 
 thousand small objects that reminded him 
 of his boyish days ; in particular, the copy- 
 books that he had used at college, and in 
 which he had jotted down his dreams of 
 travel and adventure; they would be of 
 use to him, too, later on, when he came to 
 study up for his examination as master of 
 a vessel. 
 
 The only time each day he left the
 
 76 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 house was when he went to stroll for a 
 little about the old place of Carigou, the 
 key of which had been left in their keep- 
 ing, in the well-loved garden, now over- 
 grown with weeds, that was assuming the 
 air of a neglected graveyard. It was the 
 same season of the year, the tranquil days 
 were luminous with the same mellow sun- 
 light, as when he visited the spot the pre- 
 ceding autumn, alone, as he was to-day, to 
 indulge in reveries, no less sad than those 
 of the present moment, of departure for 
 the isles of the Levant. And he plucked 
 the leaves of certain shrubs, the flowers of 
 certain rose trees, that he might press them 
 and carry them with him in memory of the 
 spot he loved so well.
 
 XVI 
 
 " JEAN ! " Mme. Berny called to her son 
 in a sad regretful voice, interrupting her 
 occupation of emptying a closet of its con- 
 tents ; " Jean, come here ! Do you remem- 
 ber this ? " and she held up before his eyes 
 a little shirt of fine cambric. 
 
 He did not remember at first, it was so 
 remote; but suddenly, oh, yes! the gar- 
 ment he had worn at the Fete-Dieu ! 
 
 She had felt a desire to take one last 
 look at it in his presence before putting it 
 aside with the things that were to be 
 destroyed or sold, but Jean insisted they 
 should take it with them, and it was 
 deposited, carefully wrapped and folded, 
 in one of the trunks that were to accom- 
 pany them to their land of exile. 
 
 " And this ? " said she, displaying a little 
 
 77
 
 78 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 brown hat, with long velvet ribbons 
 depending from it. 
 
 Then ' mournful memories of the past 
 came streaming back upon his mind, and he 
 recalled a certain Easter Sunday and the 
 dinner he partook of on that bright day of 
 spring, seated beside the old grandfather, 
 now dead and gone ; and from his heart of 
 hearts there rose a feeling of infinite melan- 
 choly, a melancholy more inexplicable and 
 cheerless in its mysterious essence than 
 any that this leave-taking had caused him 
 yet. 
 
 Oh, no ; he could not endure the thought 
 of parting with that little hat ; it was de- 
 cided that it should make the journey to 
 Brest in company with the little cambric 
 shirt which occupied so small a space. 
 
 The grandsire's frock coat, his silver- 
 headed cane, and various other things that 
 had been his, were also to go. For people 
 as poor as they, it must be admitted that 
 they encumbered themselves with a great 
 deal of useless luggage.
 
 XVII 
 
 THE last day ! And a day so bright and 
 clear, so joyful in its sunny splendor, as if 
 to inspire in them a keener regret for what 
 they were about to leave behind, an incom- 
 parable day in early November. 
 
 They were to start that evening at a late 
 hour and travel by a night train. 
 
 Jean had a multitude of things to attend 
 
 \D 
 
 to yet, and his packing was incomplete ; he 
 made haste to finish his work, that he might 
 have an hour before the sun went down to 
 revisit his garden of Carigou, and indulge 
 in reverie there. 
 
 It was a moderately long walk from the 
 city to the garden. When he unlocked 
 the gate and entered there, night was close 
 at hand : the horizontal rays of the dying 
 luminary, red as the light of a great 
 conflagration, were striking through the 
 
 o / o o 
 
 79
 
 80 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR. 
 
 branches and gilding the trunks of the old 
 impassive trees. The melancholy of each 
 of the endings that were so close at 
 hand impressed itself on him and sank 
 into his soul ; the ending day, the ending 
 autumn, and that other ending, more poign- 
 ant than all, their final departure from 
 their home. 
 
 Attachment to places, to trees, to walls, 
 is with some of us, particularly in early 
 youth, extremely powerful ; it may be that 
 in imagining we experience feelings of love 
 and regret for those inanimate things, we 
 are only lamenting the vanishment of that 
 which existed within our own being, and 
 which shone in them by a reflected light. 
 It seemed to Jean that that sale to strangers, 
 that taking from him of objects that were 
 his, could never despoil him of his right of 
 possession to those things, which he looked 
 on as being endowed almost with faculties 
 of reason and reflection ; they would always 
 be his property, not the property of those 
 who had bought them. And who can tell
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 81 
 
 if, before the commencement of his ter- 
 restrial existence, others, strangers, had not 
 left a portion of their spiritual being in 
 those same places, and experienced illusions 
 like his own 
 
 The light that had been casting rings 
 and bands of gold on the venerable tree 
 trunks suddenly faded and went out, and 
 the silence of the garden seemed to become 
 deeper and more intense ; the sun had set, 
 and with the approach of night a chill 
 breeze arose. 
 
 It was time to return. Jean cast a look 
 about him on the grass-grown walks, as if 
 to say farewell to them, and turned to go. 
 Very slowly, with many a backward, 
 lingering look, he closed and locked the 
 antique postern with an impression of never- 
 more, of absolute and eternal nevermore. 
 
 Then came their dinner, when neither of 
 them ate ; a fragmentary dinner of odds 
 and ends, served by the weeping Miette, 
 and lighted by a solitary candle placed in 
 the centre of the table.
 
 82 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 The evening^ passed heavily while wait- 
 ing for the final moment. Everything was 
 ready ; there was nothing left for them to 
 do ; they were alone together in the chill 
 solitude of the naked drawing-room, that 
 had been stripped forever of the old famil- 
 iar objects that they loved. In silence 
 they awaited the coming of the carriage 
 that was to bear them away, as one con- 
 demned to die on the scaffold awaits the 
 cart. 
 
 Jean, bearing a candle in his hand, would 
 
 / O ' 
 
 from time to time leave the room to go 
 over the house once more, to take a last 
 look at his little chamber. He might not 
 even console himself, boy like, with the 
 promise that he would buy all back again 
 at some future day, for those new-comers, 
 scorning the humble 'home that his mother 
 had tended with such loving care, were to 
 begin their work of destruction on the mor- 
 row. 
 
 About ten o'clock there was a sound of 
 wheels in the street, a dull, menacing rum-
 
 JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 83 
 
 ble at first, in the distance, on the stones. 
 Jean was the first to hear it. When they 
 were apprized of what it was, that an omni- 
 bus from the station had halted before 
 their door, it was as if Death had touched 
 them with his icy finger, and instinctively 
 mother and son threw themselves into 
 each other's arms. 
 
 They descended the stairs ; from the cor- 
 ridor below Miette's sobs came to their 
 ears. Behind them the doors, with their 
 familiar creaking, heard so oft that they 
 had come to love the sound, now to be 
 heard no more forever, closed with a clang, 
 as definitively, as irrevocably as the cover 
 of a sepulchre.
 
 XVIII 
 
 AT Brest, to which they came in the 
 early morning, by the raw, pale light of 
 breaking day, they were chilled and trans- 
 fixed poor fugitives from a land of sun- 
 shine by the change of climate that mani- 
 fested itself in everything, in the wintry 
 weather, in the gray, lifeless atmosphere 
 that pervaded the place. 
 
 They caused themselves to be directed 
 to a small hotel of the second class, dis- 
 playing the timid, retiring manner of those 
 who wish to limit their expenditure and 
 look closely to their small change. The 
 young man allowed himself to be guided 
 and controlled in everything as if he were 
 once more a little child, without will of his 
 own, passively obedient, with a bitter grief 
 constantly present in his heart. He suf- 
 fered himself to be slightly interested at 
 
 84
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 85 
 
 times, however, by all the strange sights 
 that this sombre city of gray granite had 
 to show him, with its massive ramparts, its 
 hardy maritime population and its cloudy 
 sky ; he often turned in the streets to have 
 a look at the bluejackets, of whose frater- 
 nity he was soon to be a member, half 
 charmed, half frightened sometimes, by this 
 peep into the unknown of the life that lay 
 before him. 
 
 They were some days before they found 
 a dwelling place that came near suiting 
 them. Everything that was shown them, 
 witliiii their narrow means, was so squalid 
 and repulsive. 
 
 She found less difficulty than he in 
 bringing her mind down to the idea of 
 those plebeian surroundings, that were des- 
 tined to be, for a long time, if not forever, 
 the enframement of her ruined life. Her 
 spirit of rebellion against her fate, the 
 objections of her bourgeois pride, had sensi- 
 bly diminished ; she could bow to her
 
 86 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 destiny without excessive bitterness, if only 
 the pitiful details might remain unknown 
 to the other Bernys, if she might not have 
 to drain her cup of humiliation beneath 
 their eyes. And then her Jean, who was 
 so entirely hers once more, who had drawn 
 so close to her, served very nearly to con- 
 sole her for all, to compensate for all. 
 
 But he, who doubtless had inherited 
 from the father's side a greater instinctive 
 refinement, he, on the other hand, grew 
 restive under poverty that was patent to 
 the world. When on board ship his 
 sailor temperament could endure without 
 complaining the coarseness of his associates 
 and the privations of a seaman's life, but 
 on land he experienced an unconquerable 
 aversion for everything that was repulsive 
 or smacked too much of vulgar poverty ; 
 it wounded him cruelly to see his mother 
 derogate thus, in dress, in surroundings, in 
 habits of daily life. He had the will and 
 the hope to raise her from her present con- 
 dition at some future day ; he would not
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 87 
 
 consider their then way of living other than 
 as a temporary makeshift. And in the 
 receding distance of the irrevocable past, 
 that they had so lately put behind them, 
 fair Provence and the loved home down 
 yonder stood prominently out before his 
 vision, a spot of brightness in the midst of 
 murky shadows, as if illuminated by the 
 level rays of a glorious sunset. 
 
 They finally decided they had to make 
 up their mind to something, for the hotel 
 was too expensive they decided on an 
 apartment on the third floor of a house in 
 the main street, not far from the harbor. It 
 was a gloomy place, opening on a dark and 
 noisome court. There was a single window 
 commanding an outlook on the street ; from 
 it they had a view of the by-passers below, 
 splashing through the liquid mud in their 
 wooden shoes, and on Sundays reeling and 
 staggering ; in the distance a portion of the 
 Arsenal was visible, and a corner of the 
 sailors' barracks on the hill of Kecouv- 
 rance ; on every hand were tall and massive
 
 88 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 granite structures, of a deep hue of gray, 
 that shone and glistened in the rain. 
 
 They promised themselves that they 
 would make a change at some future day, 
 would try to find something better else- 
 where. They installed themselves at first 
 in their new abode as if not intending to 
 remain there long, and complemented as 
 inexpensively as possible what little furni- 
 ture they had brought with them from Pro- 
 vence, because they could not find it in 
 their heart to sell it. And when the cases 
 that had come by the more tardy freight 
 train were brought upstairs and opened; 
 when the dearly prized objects, that had 
 made the journey from their old home, 
 began to show their familiar faces in the 
 dull gray light within the walls of the 
 abode of exile, Jean and his mother, not 
 daring to look each other in the face lest 
 they might be unable to control their sobs, 
 wept silent and slowly falling tears, that 
 seemed to come from the very bottom of 
 their torn and bleeding hearts.
 
 XIX 
 
 Two more months are numbered among 
 the past ; it is midwinter now. It is Sun- 
 day, the day when the barracks are 
 deserted and the bluejackets, abroad in 
 the dim gray light of the narrow streets of 
 the lower town, air their careless merri- 
 ment, their bright uniforms gayly trimmed 
 with red, and the light blue of their wide 
 turn-back collars. A pale sim casts its 
 lio-ht on the rain-washed granite walls, 
 
 O O ? 
 
 and, as is often the case in January, in this 
 quarter of Brittany where the sea takes 
 the land in its arms and warms it, the 
 weather is mild and pleasant. 
 
 Mother and son were leaning together 
 from the window that looked upon the 
 street, the window that was the one single 
 attractive point about their new dwelling, 
 
 89
 
 90 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 its one eye that enabled it to see what was 
 going on in the outside world. She, very 
 simply dressed, more simply than Jean 
 would have wished her to be, almost a 
 woman of the people in her deep mourn- 
 ing ; he, in sailor attire. Already quite 
 accustomed to his new dress, he wore with 
 the proper degree of unstudied negligence 
 the wide collar that is thrown open in such 
 a way as to display the bronzed neck. 
 There was some slight change to be noted 
 in his face ; he was handsomer, perhaps 
 owing to the silky black beard that he 
 had allowed to STOW on cheeks and chin 
 
 O 
 
 according to the regulations of the service ; 
 but the eyes were the same, the ardent and 
 dreamy eyes of a child. 
 
 When Jean was at home and the sun 
 condescended to favor them with a little 
 of his light, they often sat there together 
 by that window, and had almost begun to 
 look on it with eyes of friendship. For 
 little by little, slowly, very slowly, in that 
 different and lower Sphere, whither they
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 91 
 
 had been hurled like wreckage after a 
 storm, they were returning to life after the 
 great disaster, the sundering of ties, whose 
 effect had been little less annihilating to 
 them than that of death itself he, because 
 he was so very young, she, the mother, 
 because she was there with him. And 
 that mean abode, that they had first 
 accepted with loathing and disgust, lo ! 
 habit was beginning to render it more 
 attractive in their sight, and for the 
 moment they had abandoned all thought 
 of leaving it. She had accomplished won- 
 ders, moreover, in the way of arrangement, 
 purification and embellishment, repairing 
 with her own hands the rents in the tat- 
 tered old paper on the walls, putting up at 
 the windows cheap muslin curtains that 
 gave the premises a bright air of cheerful- 
 ness. In the most conspicuous places she 
 had put the few ornaments that they had 
 brought from Antibes, the candelabra, the 
 vases that had decorated the mantelshelf 
 in the drawing-room down yonder, and
 
 92 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 other small objects that were endeared to 
 them by association. 
 
 Safely bestowed in the depths of a great 
 clothes press were the more sacred of their 
 relics. There reposed the coat that the 
 grandfather had worn last, his spectacles 
 and silver-headed cane, with some volumes 
 of his favorite authors, and note books filled 
 with memoranda in his tremulous old man's 
 handwriting. Close beside them, on the 
 same shelf, were certain small articles of 
 apparel, priceless souvenirs of Jean's child- 
 hood : the shirt in which he had imper- 
 sonated an angel at the Fete-Dieu, and, in a 
 pasteboard box, carefully wrapped in green 
 gauze, the memorable little brown felt hat 
 of that long-past Easter Sunday. 
 
 He himself, formerly so inexpert and 
 helpless in matters of household detail, 
 was untiring in his care for this poor little 
 kingdom where mother and son held sway, 
 moving furniture about, driving nails, and 
 taking off his jacket to scrub the floor, an 
 operation that reminded him of holy-stoning
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 93 
 
 the deck on shipboard. His roving instincts 
 slumbered for the time ; remorse had dulled 
 and blunted them. It would have seemed 
 to him the depth of baseness to do any- 
 thing that might add to his mother's dis- 
 tress ; he was swayed by his affection and 
 sentiment of tender compassion ; with the 
 sensation of being his own master, since he 
 was a sailor, he was of his own free will 
 submissive and obedient and that was the 
 only possible way in which he could be 
 so and his self-imposed servitude even 
 came to be easy and pleasant to him. At 
 evening he came straight home from the 
 barracks, devoting all his hours of liberty 
 to his mother, never goinoj for a stroll 
 
 / O O 
 
 unless accompanied by her, and on such 
 occasions giving her his arm with a charm- 
 ing air of sedateness that she had never 
 known in him before.
 
 XX 
 
 IT is the summer season of the succeed- 
 ing year. 
 
 They entertained a friendlier feeling for 
 their humble quarters now that they had 
 spent eighteen months together in them. 
 Still, however, the old wound did not heal ; 
 their banishment was hard to bear, and 
 regret for the dear paternal home was no 
 less poignant than ever. The memory of 
 Provence constantly grew fainter and more 
 indistinct, but in the same measure it was 
 crowned with a bright aureole of golden 
 hue, like a vanished Eden. The most 
 worthless object among their household 
 goods that came from home was a sacred 
 thing apart, not to be touched save in a 
 spirit of awed respect, and that never failed 
 to excite feelings of sudden melancholy, to 
 
 94
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 95 
 
 induce a quicker and more painful throb- 
 bing of the heart. 
 
 Jean had just finished his time on board 
 the Bretagne, a large sailing vessel, an- 
 chored in the roadstead, where the fog 
 always lay thick, that did duty as a school- 
 ship. The simple and wholesome life that 
 the young men lead, constantly exposed to 
 the damp, salt-laden breezes, to the strong 
 west winds that fill the lungs with oxygen, 
 is a Spartan regimen, and acts differently 
 on different constitutions, eliminating the 
 weak and strengthening the strong. 
 
 Jean's natural vigor and robustness had 
 increased considerably under these con- 
 ditions. He was a good sailor, moreover, 
 attentive to his duties, alert and energetic, 
 and at the same time obedient and chary of 
 his words. His innate independence did 
 not rebel against the iron strictness of the 
 discipline ; he, who was so quick to resent 
 individual interference, accepted this par- 
 ticular yoke, which is not hard to bear for 
 the very reason that it is impersonal and
 
 96 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 uniform, and frequently ends in reclaiming 
 the most untamable and refractory natures. 
 
 Always punctual at drill, never mistaking 
 one rope for another in the complicated 
 tangle of the rigging, never shirking his 
 duty, he had every quality of the perfect 
 seaman. In addition to his other merits he 
 had speedily acquired the spirit of dandy- 
 ism that is characteristic of the service : 
 the jaunty manner of wearing the uniform, 
 the correct angle at which to sport the red- 
 tasseled flat cap, which is kept in shape by 
 a hoop of whalebone, the unvaryingly 
 immaculate whiteness of the coarse duck 
 jacket and trousers. 
 
 But by no consideration could he ever pre- 
 vail on himself to take up any kind of intel- 
 lectual labor, for the greater his physical 
 activity, the less disposed he was to mental 
 application. An acquired roughness of 
 manner and lack of sociability overlaid 
 without extinguishing the germs of art and 
 poetry that were originally inherent in him, 
 and which, developed by the education of
 
 JEAN RERNY, SAILOR 97 
 
 Ms earlier years, were at present indestruc- 
 tible. Without losing his native air of dis- 
 tinction, he was constantly becoming more 
 and more a sailor, in looks, language and 
 manners, a twofold character that has 
 nothing inconsistent in it, however. It is 
 a privilege accorded the seafaring man 
 that he may in many instances display the 
 most astonishing freedom in language and 
 behavior, and yet never be trivial or vulgar, 
 never proletarian. 
 
 So therefore, under these changed ex- 
 ternal conditions, he still remained one 
 whom mention of the immemorial Orient or 
 a mystical, sonorous phrase would suffice 
 to plunge into depths of reverie, into an 
 unfathomable gulf of melancholy. A boy 
 withal, always and ever a great boy, in his 
 careless disregard of the future, even in his 
 pleasures, associating with the youngest 
 and most artless of his comrades, and going 
 now and then to laugh in company with 
 them at the wildest, most extravagant and 
 fantastic spectacles. He furthermore still
 
 98 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 continued to be that one who, in the old 
 days at Antibes, had befriended the old 
 beggars in the street, and saved little 
 kittens from premature death by drowning 
 in the gutter; reserving his kindness and 
 pity for the more humble among his ship- 
 mates and those from whom fortune with- 
 held her smiles. 
 
 At intervals, as inclination prompted, he 
 abandoned himself nowadays to his old 
 propensity for adventures of the street, 
 which had lain dormant for a long time 
 after their arrival at Brest. On leaving 
 the barracks of a fine evening he would 
 allow himself to be diverted from his 
 homeward road by the pretty muslin coif 
 of some gentle Breton maiden, or by the 
 gay feathers of some bonnet encountered 
 on the highway, and would afterward ex- 
 culpate himself to his anxiously waiting 
 mother by a wonderful story manufactured 
 out of whole cloth, lying in such cases with 
 no more compunction than a child, for the 
 sake of saving her pain. And if he was
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 99 
 
 detected and convicted of his deceitful 
 intentions, he would lower his laughing 
 eyes with the manner of a schoolboy caught 
 red-handed in some peccadillo, who has no 
 remorse and will do the same thing again 
 as soon as the teacher's back is turned. In 
 all other respects, however, he manifested 
 such respect and tender devotion for his 
 mother that the poor lady was compara- 
 tively happy in her altered circumstances. 
 
 In their modest way of living, too, a 
 little ease and comfort were beginning to 
 return to the forlorn little household. 
 When the affairs in Provence came to be 
 finally settled up, the widow found that 
 she had left a small capital sufficient to 
 produce an annual income of seven or eight 
 hundred francs, and after bravely serving 
 her apprenticeship, she was now working 
 at embroidering the ornaments and insignia 
 of gold that are worn by naval officers. 
 
 She dressed with extreme simplicity, 
 almost like a working woman, in spite of 
 all Jean could do or say, who worried a
 
 100 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 good deal over his mother's gowns and 
 thought they could never be too fine ; it 
 pained him to see her go out upon the 
 street wearing a little black worsted shawl, 
 and it was his constant dream that some 
 day he would restore her to her former 
 position in life. The neighbors, the other 
 tenants of the immense granite barrack 
 where they lived, and of which the walls 
 were always dripping with moisture, had 
 been made to keep their distance during 
 the first few months, then gradually closer 
 relations had developed. They said : 
 "They are people who have seen better 
 days," and being good-hearted women at 
 bottom, they did not harbor malice toward 
 the strangers for their coolness on first 
 acquaintance. 
 
 With the family in Provence a few let- 
 ters had been exchanged at first at rare and 
 increasing intervals. But the answers to 
 their missives came more and more tardily, 
 and when they came were more and more 
 insolently patronizing toward this ruined
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 101 
 
 widow and her son the bluejacket, and so 
 they allowed their relations with Antibes 
 to fall into a state of desuetude until that 
 day, the object of their dreams, when Jean, 
 wearing a captain's uniform, should present 
 himself once more with head erect in his 
 native land, and bring his mother to her 
 own again. And now that poor old 
 Miette, in her unwillingness to serve 
 other masters, had gone away to die, up in 
 her village among the mountains, they had 
 the distinct impression that they two were 
 alone in the world, that they were two 
 lonely outcasts, whom no one acknowl- 
 edged, and who had ceased to be of account 
 
 O ' 
 
 to anyone. 
 
 For whom, then, should she trouble her- 
 self to maintain the dress and appearance 
 of a lady? There were moments of dis- 
 couragement when she was tempted to give 
 up and let everything go by the board, and 
 when her Jean, with a pride greater than 
 hers, reasoned with her kindly, "Well, 
 what can you expect from a sailor's moth-
 
 102 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 er ! " she would answer in a tone bordering 
 on bitterness, which recalled the misunder- 
 standings and harsh words of days gone by, 
 but the effect of which she would make 
 haste to temper with a kiss and an affec- 
 tionate smile.
 
 XXI 
 
 THEIR second year at Brest was drawing 
 to an end. 
 
 On an evening when the weather was 
 
 ~ 
 
 more than usually fine mother and son 
 were seated at their window that is to 
 say, at the single window of their mean 
 and contracted dining-room, which was the 
 only one that looked upon the street. It 
 Avas there, whenever the west wind did not 
 blow too hard, that their pleasantest mo- 
 ments were spent, in restful idleness and 
 conversation. The thickness of the wall, 
 substantial as a city's rampart, afforded a 
 wide comfortable place on which to rest 
 their elbows, and they had furnished it 
 with a cushion covered with red cloth, as 
 the usage of the quarter demanded should 
 be done for the windows of every apart- 
 
 103
 
 104 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 inent that laid any claim at all to gen- 
 tility. 
 
 What they beheld from there had not 
 the attraction of strangeness or unfamiliar- 
 ity ; there were certain persons who came 
 and went regularly every day at the same 
 hour that they looked on as old acquaint- 
 ances, so well had they come to know their 
 faces and general aspect ; some afforded 
 Jean food for merriment, and he would 
 counterfeit the voice of a little child and 
 say something like this : " Wait for me, 
 mother dear ; the young lady with the 
 parrot's nose has not gone by yet, and you 
 know I can't come to the table until she 
 does." Beneath them, slightly raised above 
 the level of the sidewalk, was an ancient 
 terrace of granite on which w^as a tiny gar- 
 den with a border of box ; twice already 
 they had beheld in it the growth and blos- 
 soming of the same flowers, fuchsias and 
 geraniums, and a few sickly, stunted roses ; 
 of those luxuriant southern vines that 
 brighten up old walls so cheerfully there
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 105 
 
 was no trace, but growing from the crevices 
 between the stones were plants that had 
 never been set out there : mosses, ferns 
 and the homely pink foxglove, friends and 
 parasites of the cold Breton granite. And 
 some portion of themselves had already 
 passed into this entourage and remained 
 there ; what they loved was not the local- 
 ity, but their own anterior existence, that 
 had taken possession of the locality, and, so 
 to speak, impregnated it and particularly 
 their anterior state of mutual love and ten- 
 derness, destined to perish and be forgot- 
 ten. 
 
 Among the self-imposed deceptions of 
 life is the hold that we allow inanimate 
 objects to take on us a hold almost as 
 tenacious as that of living beings, although 
 the latter, it is true, are shorter lived than 
 the former. Our attachment to localities, 
 to relics, as well as to memories and tradi- 
 tions, is really but a more cultivated form, 
 a form adapted to our more highly devel- 
 oped intelligence, of the universal senti-
 
 106 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 ment of self-preservation. Dumb animals, 
 when death appears imminent to them, 
 simply avoid it by flight, or defend them- 
 selves as well as they can with the means 
 that nature has provided them with, but 
 against time, which is constantly destroy- 
 ing them, they have no resource. We, who 
 are molded from the same clay and will 
 doubtless return to the same dust, endeavor 
 to defend ourselves by lofty dreams, by 
 hopes of futurity, and by sublime prayers 
 and invocations ; or otherwise, by love of 
 our childhood's home, of a house long 
 inhabited by our ancestors, by the affection 
 and respect we bestow on the poor little 
 objects of every sort that are connected in 
 any way with our irrevocable past. The 
 attachment to things and places, that has 
 its source in the fear of death, is the most 
 childish of all human cults, reserve being 
 made of that malignant cult of disappointed 
 incredulity, to which we return after having 
 sounded the unfathomable black void of 
 wavering belief.
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 107 
 
 Jean and his mother had been wishing 
 since morning for fine weather, in order that 
 they might pass this evening, the last before 
 their parting, together at their window ; he 
 was to start the morrow on a ten months' 
 cruise. And if it had been made expressly 
 to their order it could not have been more 
 accordant with their desire, this rare, warm, 
 limpid twilight, which produced in them 
 the illusion of being somewhere else, of 
 being far away, nearer the sunny south. 
 There was not a breath of air stirring, not 
 a cloud to be seen in the heavens, and, in- 
 deed, the beauty of the evening exceeded 
 their wishes ; such suimnerlike resplendency 
 added to their melancholy and made their 
 parting more painful, by reminding them 
 of their loved Provence, where evenings 
 like this occur so frequently. 
 
 The Hesolue was to leave the yard the 
 next morning on her annual cruise in the 
 waters of the Atlantic, and Jean was to be 
 on board of her. He had arranged all his 
 plans for the future, and they showed a
 
 108 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 great deal of judgment and good sense ; he 
 would return the following summer, wear- 
 
 o 
 
 ing the stripes of a quartermaster, then he 
 would ship without delay for a long cruise 
 that would bring his term of enlistment to 
 a close ; he would be very economical, and 
 with his savings on his return would take 
 a course in hydrography, and pass the exam- 
 ination required by law before he could 
 command a merchant ship. 
 
 With these fine schemes in his head it 
 would have been well for him j;o rub up 
 his mathematics a bit. The text-books he 
 had used at college, together with his notes 
 of the professor's lectures, were piled on 
 the table in his bedroom, but he never con- 
 sulted them except to open them, from time 
 to time, for a look at the flowers from Cari- 
 gou that were drying between their pages. 
 By natural inclination, and by reason of 
 his excessive fondness for physical exercise, 
 he was indolent and incapable of exertion 
 where intellectual labor was concerned ; 
 for mathematical studies in particular he
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 109 
 
 had an insuperable aversion, he whose com- 
 prehension was so acute in matters pertain- 
 ing to poetry and art. 
 
 Night was closing in, slowly and reluc- 
 tantly, replacing the beautiful twilight. In 
 the street below men and women, coming 
 in from their evening stroll, were beginning 
 to appear against the darker background 
 of wall and pavement as indistinct dark 
 masses, dotted here and there by the white 
 coifs of the females. And by degrees this 
 last evening stamped itself indelibly on 
 both their memories, even as so many fugi- 
 tive moments of our lives stamp themselves 
 there, no one can tell why, to the exclusion 
 of so many others. It occurred to Jean 
 that he had really come to have a friendly 
 feeling for that corner by the window ; for 
 the various sights afforded by the quarter ; 
 for that terrace garden that was not even 
 part of his hired domicile, and for those 
 fragile flowers that unknown hands had 
 reared. And she, the mother, now let fall 
 her head upon her bosom, seeing nothing
 
 110 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 of what was going on without, her rnind 
 filled with anguish there in the gathering 
 darkness at the thought of ten months of 
 weary waiting, of the long winter that lay 
 before her, so desolate and lonely, without 
 her boy.
 
 XXII 
 
 the broad ocean. Stretching on 
 every hand, far as the eye can see, the in- 
 finite expanse of deep blue sea. .Above the 
 deck the towering fabric of snow-white sails 
 and brown, tarry ropes, domain of Jean and 
 the other topmen ; a mechanism of won- 
 drous organization, a thing of life almost, 
 where every motor nerve has its name, its 
 function and its life ; and, circulating among 
 all those intricacies, the crew, that is to say, 
 some hundreds of men, brought together 
 by chance, whose names have suddenly 
 been converted into numbers and whose 
 personalities are absorbed in the duties 
 they have to perform. In the case of those 
 young and simple-minded men, who lead a 
 life of isolation, cut off from the world and 
 its affairs, the individual being suffers 
 annihilation no less than in monastic corn- 
 ill
 
 112 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 nmnities ; the interest they manifest in 
 what is going on around them from day to 
 day is limited to asking one another if the 
 drill went oif with snap and animation, if 
 the log has been heaved recently and what 
 showing did it make, was the navigating 
 officer successful in getting his reckoning. 
 In the orderly arrangement of this compli- 
 cated whole everyone restricts himself to 
 playing the special and unalterable part 
 that is assigned to him ; he is the generator 
 of the physical force that is required at 
 such a given point at such a given moment, 
 he is the spring of flesh and blood that 
 serves to tighten a certain rope and never 
 any other ; his, too, is the hand that at a 
 fixed moment of each succeeding day pro- 
 ceeds to scour this hard wood pulley or 
 polish that iron bolt; he accomplishes 
 automatically the succession of duties that 
 others before him strangers, now for- 
 gotten, who bore the same number accom- 
 plished with the same undeviating regular- 
 ity. And in this entire renunciation of all
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 113 
 
 volition and freedom of action, the whole- 
 some and invigorating life they lead 
 hardens the muscles, gives them their 
 superficial gayety and brings the ready 
 laugh to their lips, and makes it possible 
 for them to throw themselves down any- 
 where, no matter how hard the plank, no 
 matter what the hour of day or night, and 
 at once lose themselves in slumber, peace- 
 ful as a little child's, soon as the shrill call 
 of the boatswain's whistle has ceased to 
 reverberate in their ears. 
 
 But all are not equally insouciant / in 
 those who are naturally inclined to reflec- 
 tion, reverie, beneath this superabundant 
 material life, assumes a greater intensity in 
 a more restricted sphere. In some, also, 
 there is, so to speak, a twofold development 
 of the nature, an outer and an inner man. 
 A topman, for example, all whose talk is 
 of ropes and sails, for whom life seems to 
 have no object outside of his seaman's call- 
 ing, you will find at bottom to be a child- 
 like beiuoj whose thoughts are centred in 
 
 O O
 
 114 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 some little hamlet of the Breton coast, in 
 the affections and small interests he has 
 left there behind him in his distant home. 
 And those things alone are accounted by 
 him as having any importance ; he talks 
 and does his duty on board ship mechanic- 
 ally, his mind far away, unobservant of the 
 strange countries he visits, unmoved by the 
 inconceivable immensity of the sea. 
 
 In the tranquil evening hours of idleness, 
 a sailor (No. 218, we will suppose him to be, 
 foretop starboard yardarm) becomes once 
 more the Pierre or Jean-Marie of his earlier 
 days, and goes and seats himself beside 
 another young man from his neighborhood, 
 who has also resumed his individuality of 
 other times. They question each other, 
 they seek in their dull, groping way to 
 penetrate the mystery of each other's soul, 
 and thus a sort of brotherhood is inaugur- 
 ated between those who have embraced a 
 calling so full of danger and fatigue. 
 
 Jean, for his part, spun yarns and con- 
 versed indifferently with all hands in their
 
 JEAN BURNT, SAILOR 115 
 
 own language and manner, a thorough 
 sailor at heart, and for the rest sufficiently 
 elevated by education and refinement above 
 the remainder of the ship's company to be 
 able to indulge in a quiet, good-natured 
 laugh now and then at their artless com- 
 munications.
 
 XXIII 
 
 EVEKY day, long drills and exercises, 
 unlimited expenditure of muscular force, 
 the sailors' rude, long-drawn song timing 
 the execution of the movement, the shrill 
 piping of the boatswain's whistle, the rattle 
 of ropes running througli the blocks, the 
 sound of laboring chests, of muscles con- 
 tracting and expanding beneath duck jack- 
 ets ; all the noisy labor that is required to 
 animate those immense, widespread objects 
 that are called sails, and give to them the 
 lightness and power that reside in the 
 pinions of feathered things. 
 
 But at eventide, in the delicious balmy 
 weather, the hours of tranquillity returned 
 once more, the watches beneath the stars. 
 After the sun had gone down in glory the 
 men collected on the deck to idle, spin 
 yarns and sleep, to the accompaniment of 
 
 116
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 117 
 
 the gentle soothing motion of the vessel, in 
 the pure, clear air. Gathering in little 
 social groups they related thrilling tales of 
 adventure or sung songs until sleep, the 
 great restorer, came to them. 
 
 As for Jean, in the beginning those were 
 hours of darkness and gloom ; all in vain 
 was it that he stretched himself nonchalantly 
 on the deck like the others, with equal 
 means to theirs of making himself comfort- 
 able ; he felt that his nature was more 
 complex than theirs, infinitely more com- 
 plex. And then those were the only 
 moments he had when he could think of 
 the future, of the difficulties that lay before 
 him, of the money that he must have later 
 on to pay for instruction at Brest, of the 
 toil and study he would have to undergo 
 before he could obtain his captain's certifi- 
 cate. 
 
 No, he could not see his way clear as to 
 how he was ever to pass that examination. 
 He felt moreover that on the Resolue the 
 life of muscular exertion that he was lead-
 
 118 JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 
 
 ing was taking too much out of him, that 
 every day his mind was becoming more 
 and more impenetrable to mathematical 
 abstractions. 
 
 The poor college note-books, that he had 
 requested his mother to send to him on 
 ship-board and which he prized as if they 
 had been relics, were suffering terribly from 
 abrasion of the corners, in spite of all his 
 care, in the clothes-bag where he had 
 stowed them; they were grown yellow, 
 and the ink was faint and pale with age. 
 The dark tangle of mysterious lines and 
 figures between their covers was becoming 
 less and less intelligible to him, an unde- 
 cipherable riddle, a treatise on occult 
 arcana. And it would be necessaiy to 
 learn all that afresh, and astronomy to 
 boot ! When he had time and came to 
 think the matter over in the calm repose of 
 evening, the impossibilities that lay in his 
 way terrified him ; it seemed to him that 
 he never could master them, that to try 
 would be waste of time.
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 119 
 
 Then he would comfort himself with 
 the thought that lie had years before him, 
 that the time was not yet come for him to 
 apply himself and bother his brains with 
 work ; and he would bend his ear to listen 
 to the great children who were chattering 
 on every side of him, and laugh at their art- 
 less talk and a smile would rise to his lips, 
 a smile and oblivion. Without troubling 
 himself to think about it, he was gradually 
 retrograding and, in a dangerous and per- 
 haps definitive way, declining upon that life 
 of the sailor that he had in the first place 
 accepted only as a temporary makeshift. 
 
 On days of rest, however, when the 
 others applied themselves to their games 
 and sports, or visited the ship's library in 
 quest of books within the range of their 
 intelligence, Jean also often read books 
 that one of the officers loaned him. But 
 for a common foretopman his choice of 
 reading was singular. He renewed his 
 acquaintance with Akedysseril, whose 
 resounding words and magniloquent
 
 120 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 phrases had been ringing in his head for 
 years; he encountered Heriodade and 
 Salammbo, who, strangers until then, 
 infused the glamour of their melancholy 
 into the vague immensity of his dreamy 
 reverie.
 
 XXIV 
 
 WITHIN the tropics, on a wondrous 
 evening when the Southern trades were 
 blowing with their balmiest softness, 
 the corporeal portion of his being tired 
 with a healthy muscular fatigue, gently 
 lulled by the slumberous rhythmic motion 
 of the ship, as a little child is rocked to 
 sleep in his cradle, Jean was half sitting, 
 half lying on the deck in the mild light of 
 the new-born stars, in the midst of the 
 gathering swarm of white- jacketed sailor 
 lads, who were coming up from below, one 
 after another, and forming snug little 
 groups preparatory to passing the pleasant 
 hours of evening in one another's society. 
 And in those moments of calmness and 
 repose that precede slumber his thoughts, 
 as usual, assumed a more sombre cast as 
 
 * 121
 
 122 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 the future and that dreaded examination 
 rose before his mind. 
 
 Close at hand, on his right, were his two 
 chosen comrades, Le Marec, quartermaster, 
 and Joal, captain of the rnizzen-top, both 
 hailing from the Cotes-du-Nord, surrounded 
 at that moment by a group of young 
 pays or men from their own district 
 who were listening reverentially to their 
 conversation. 
 
 On his left was a little congregation of 
 Basques, a race apart, who every now and 
 then would break out and chatter in an 
 unintelligible jargon, older than the hills. 
 
 A little further away another group was 
 singing in chorus a lively air in couplets, 
 in which the refrain : " Old Neptune, 
 Monarch of the Sea " came in every minute 
 or so in a light, catchy way. 
 
 Among the Bretons a blood-curdling, 
 marrow-freezing story of mystery and dark- 
 ness was going on, the confused beginning 
 of which Jean had failed to catch. The 
 yarn was of a suspicious-looking brig, dere-
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 123 
 
 lict and abandoned by her crew, that had 
 been encountered in the English Channel 
 in the twilight at the close of a dim 
 winter's day ; a ghostly wanderer on the 
 water that no one dared board for fear of 
 encountering dead men on her. 
 
 The Basques of the group to the left 
 were listening to a wild tale of warlike 
 adventure beneath the blazing sun and on 
 the burning sands of Dahomey. 
 
 The two stories, equally lurid and fan- 
 tastic, reached Jean's ears in disconnected 
 fragments, and were mingled and blended 
 in his brain, over which sleep was begin- 
 ning to exert its confusing influence, while 
 from the chorus in the distance came thie 
 persistently reiterated refrain of " Old 
 Neptune," running thread-like through the 
 whole and connecting the parts by a sort of 
 obligato accompaniment. There is small 
 opportunity for privacy on shipboard of a 
 fine evening, when the crew are all on 
 deck. 
 
 "Well," Le Marec was saying he had
 
 124 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 been a fisherman of Brieuc in his younger 
 days " well, at last we conclude to board 
 her " (it was of that grewsonie derelict that 
 he was speaking). " It was none too light, 
 for the weather was thick and the night 
 was close at hand, and I tell you what it is, 
 boys, I felt pretty shaky about that time. 
 All the same, though, I raise my hands 
 and catch onto the gunwale, so as to hoist 
 myself up and get a look at what was 
 inside and then, my friends, what think 
 you it is I see? A huge tall form, with 
 black face, and horns, and a long pointed 
 beard, that springs to its feet and makes a 
 rush for me 
 
 "It was the Devil, wasn't it?" asked 
 Joal, convinced that he had guessed 
 aright. 
 
 " We thought it was, for certain, for 
 a while but no ; it was only an old billy: 
 goat ! but such- a great, big fellow, you 
 can't imagine. I don't believe anyone ever 
 saw his like." 
 
 And Turubeta, a Basque from Zitzarry,
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 125 
 
 was running on at the same time, in a voice, 
 that, compared with the deep tones of the 
 honest Bretons, seemed shrill and piercing 
 as a fife. 
 
 " It was the Amazon who had informed 
 on the poor beggar of a spy, don't you see. 
 Then the other fellow, the big black man, 
 catches hold of him. l Come along to the 
 beach,' he says to him. ' Come along, come 
 along ; I am going to chop off your 
 head!'" 
 
 "And did he go ? " inquired the skepti- 
 cal Etcheverry who was from Biarritz, 
 where the sailors are beginning to acquire 
 more modern ideas. 
 
 " Did he go ? of course he did ! Because 
 he couldn't help himself, don't you see; 
 the moment he was caught playing the spy 
 he knew it was all tip with him. He 
 didn't feel any too good over it, all the 
 same, as you may suppose." 
 
 And the Breton continued to reel off his 
 yarn of mystery and darkness : 
 
 " The billy-goat was the only living soul
 
 126 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 on board the brig, and as she was carrying 
 a cargo "of barley in bulk, he had had 
 plenty to eat. If I were tojtry to tell you 
 how fat he was you wouldn't believe 
 
 me " 
 
 " So he goes to work and binds the dirty 
 spy's hands behind his back," Turubeta 
 continued, " that way, with a rope of straw, 
 such as they use to fasten their horses with 
 in that beastly country, and makes him get 
 down on his knees upon the sand, and 
 begins to hack away at the back of his 
 neck with his old cheese-toaster. But now 
 that it was fairly begun, the other fellow 
 didn't want any more of it oh, boys, you 
 ought to have heard the fuss he made! 
 And the Amazon grinned and showed her 
 white teeth see, like that, to show how 
 glad she was, I suppose. Well, you may 
 believe me or not, just as you choose, but 
 his regulation sabre was so dull that he 
 could not do the job with it, and in order 
 to finish the business he had to go down 
 into his pocket and bring out a cheap little
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 127 
 
 knife that I myself had given him, and for 
 which I paid old Mother Virginie, in the 
 bazaar at Goree, ten sous when it was 
 
 While the listeners were making merry 
 over this original method of executing a 
 death sentence their neighbors, the Bre- 
 tons, were brooding reflectively over the 
 history of the abandoned brig and the black 
 goat, and Jean, who, toward the conclusion 
 of the two narratives, had bent his ear alter- 
 nately to left and right to listen, smiled 
 indulgently at the childish credulity of his 
 shipmates; the sprightly song "Old Nep- 
 tune" also inspired him with some of its 
 irresistible, contagious gayety. He had 
 never felt himself so completely and thor- 
 ou^hlv a sailor as he did that evenino-. 
 
 o / O 
 
 His anxieties for the future, which had 
 been growing less troublesome with each 
 succeeding day, now vanished entirely in 
 the sensation of well-being and repose ex- 
 perienced by his weary body. He yielded 
 himself up to the purely animal delight of
 
 128 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 living and breathing, on that pleasant even 
 ing, of feeling his muscles so hard and 
 supple under his loosely fitting garments. 
 He stretched himself at full length on the 
 snow-white planks, which were his most 
 frequent bed, and made a pillow of the 
 man who chanced to be next to him, a 
 neighborly courtesy to which no sailorman 
 objects. 
 
 It was of all the twenty-four the enchant- 
 ing hour on those summer seas where the 
 gentle trade winds blow. For a moment 
 he was conscious of the tall edifice of snowy 
 canvas towering above his head and oscil- 
 lating with a regular rhythmic movement 
 upon the deep blue of the heavens ; then 
 the bright constellations of the southern 
 sky blazed forth between the sails and rig- 
 ging, now growing more shadowy and in- 
 distinct, and seemed to be playing a solemn 
 game of hide and seek, vanishing at uni- 
 form intervals and reappearing, then hiding 
 again, to commence afresh their stately
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 129 
 
 evolutions in unison with the easy rolling 
 of the vessel. At last they faded from his 
 sio;ht, and beneficent slumber, bearer of 
 
 O ' ' 
 
 oblivion and peace, descended and sealed 
 his eyes.
 
 XXV 
 
 THE succeeding month of May beheld 
 our sailor boy in Quebec, where his ship 
 was unexpectedly obliged to make a long 
 stop for repairs. There was a retired street 
 in one of the faubourgs of the city which 
 had long ceased to have the attraction of 
 novelty for him, and from a small house in 
 this street he was seen to emerge every 
 evening in company with a golden-haired 
 lassie, who was his own affianced bride; 
 frank and fearless in manner, her long 
 bright hair floating down upon her 
 shoulders, well-dressed and ladylike in ap- 
 pearance, she would lead him forth by 
 paths among the tender young green grass, 
 and stroll, unattended save by him, till 
 nightfall. 
 
 It had come about very quickly, that 
 betrothal, almost in a day. A Frenchman, 
 
 130
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 131 
 
 a worthy sort of person in moderate cir- 
 cumstances, a descendant of the old Can- 
 adian settlers, being on board the Resolue 
 one day, had stopped for a while and 
 watched Jean at his duty, then suddenly, 
 to the other's astonishment, had blurted 
 out : " Come and see me ; I have three 
 daughters ; you shall select which one of 
 them you will, and she shall be your wife." 
 And that was the way he made the girl's 
 acquaintance. 
 
 To tell the truth, he had never by word 
 of mouth announced a preference for one 
 of the three sisters over the other two, but 
 it was evident enough that pretty Mar' was 
 the object of his choice, and in their capacity 
 of plighted lovers they went together when 
 and where they pleased, and no one had a 
 word to say against it. While the vessel 
 was undergoing repairs, his time was his 
 own pretty much every evening ; hence he 
 was at liberty to go and woo his Marie 
 when he would, in that house where the 
 parents seldom showed their faces, and
 
 132 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 where the two other girls treated him as if 
 he had already been their brother. 
 
 The whole affair seemed to him to have 
 a fantastic air of improbability about it, 
 as had the spring, which to him was no 
 spring at all, and it made him smile to see 
 Mar' in those long, cold evenings, wearing 
 muslin dresses and crowning her glorious 
 golden mane with a straw hat. That sud- 
 den engagement, those uncertain evenings 
 of May, appeared to him equally unstable, 
 equally liable to change and pass away like 
 all things terrestrial. 
 
 Astonished, and it must be confessed, 
 considerably amused at the beginning, at 
 a later period unwilling to wound the sus- 
 ceptibilities of his new friends, who, if 
 eccentric, were kind-hearted and worthy 
 people, he let the days run on without say- 
 ing anything to intimate his non-acceptance 
 of the old man's proposal Marie's fresh, 
 pink cheeks, and pretty face meanwhile 
 contriving to find fresh favor in bis eyes 
 with each succeeding day.
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 133 
 
 " Let the corvette go back to France," 
 the father said, " and stay with us. We 
 can send and bring your mother over, you 
 know. I have been wishing all along that 
 I mio;ht have a Frenchman for a son-in-law, 
 
 O * 
 
 an active, industrious young man, and 
 above all, dark-complexioned because my 
 daughters are too fair, and my wife has 
 two sisters who are albinoes. Now you un- 
 derstand me." Then he went on to disclose 
 his plans for the future, and explain the 
 nature of the business (an open air occupa- 
 tion of great promise) that he proposed to 
 share with the husband of his daughter. 
 
 But when the day came for them to sail 
 Jean stuck by his ship. What, desert the 
 flag, renounce all hope of ever again be- 
 holding the shores of France, the little 
 house at Antibes, the garden of Carigou 
 he would rather have lain down and died 
 at once ! And then there was so little in 
 that land of America that appealed to his 
 soul of poet and lover of the Orient, that
 
 134 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 took pleasure in nothing save old ruins, 
 the immutable, the dead past. 
 
 His heart was a little heavy, however, 
 while they were getting aboard the anchor 
 to the sound of a cheerful refrain. He re- 
 gretted to leave that Marie, with her golden 
 hair that had so often swept his face, 
 blown by the wind ; perhaps he regretted 
 more the parcels of his existence, the 
 crumbs of love, that he had left by the road- 
 side, among the grass, during their walks 
 at eventide. 
 
 He sailed aw^ay, telling himself that he 
 would write soon, that he would certainly 
 return, would marry her, perhaps. But he 
 was so constituted that with the exception 
 of his mother and his childish memories 
 of Provence, there was nothing that had 
 power to stir his feelings or readily awaken 
 his affections. Emotion slipped from off 
 him, so to speak, and found no chink or 
 cranny by which to penetrate his inner 
 nature through its envelope of careless un- 
 concern.
 
 XXVI 
 
 " MOTHEK, let me have just one look at 
 the little brown hat I wore that Easter 
 Sunday." 
 
 The words were spoken in an accent that 
 recalled Antibes, and with a comical imita- 
 tion of the lisping utterance of a little 
 child, that he assumed occasionally to amuse 
 his mother and bring a smile to her lips. 
 She opened the press where the relics were 
 kept, took from it a bandbox of antiquated 
 shape, and held up for his inspection the 
 hat that was inside, carefully wrapped in 
 gauze. 
 
 Jean had reached home that same day 
 from his cruise on board \hvltesolue, and 
 this evocation of ancient memories consti- 
 tuted one of the melancholy pleasures of his 
 return. The little cambric shirt, the grand- 
 
 135
 
 136 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 father's coat and cane were also brought 
 out and looked at, and then the poor, paltry 
 objects were carefully laid away again. 
 
 Afterward she showed him the various 
 alterations and improvements she had made, 
 in his chamber particularly ; there was a 
 knitted counterpane for his bed, the work 
 of her hands during the long winter even- 
 ings, when her tired eyes were unable 
 longer to see the stitches and she had to lay 
 aside her embroidery work for the officers. 
 " I grant you it looks a good deal like the 
 spreads poor people use," she said, "but 
 what would you have, my son ? it is use- 
 ful, it is warm, and when I am gone you 
 will remember it was your mother made 
 it." 
 
 To him everything appeared very nice, 
 very pretty; after the Spartan simplicity 
 that prevailed on shipboard, the neatly 
 kept little apartment, with its freshly ironed 
 muslin curtains, white as the driven snow, 
 had an air almost of luxury. And yet, on 
 this, his day of home-coming, the sky was
 
 JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 137 
 
 overcast and sombre ; a pelting, relentless 
 summer rain storm, cold as winter, was 
 inundating Brest, shedding its gloom on 
 everything. 
 
 She looked admiringly on him, her boy, 
 in the full splendor of his one-and-twenty 
 years, so supple and tall of stature, with 
 broad, square shoulders, the pure profile 
 and warm complexion set in a frame of 
 soft black beard. But what she admired 
 and loved most of all was his great eyes, 
 with their dark Arab brows and lashes, soft 
 as velvet, eyes in which, when turned 
 affectionately on her, she could read the 
 candid smile of childhood. 
 
 He stood well with his superiors, more- 
 over, having acquired their favor by his 
 close attention to his duties, and came home 
 wearing on his sleeves the stripes of 
 quartermaster, which are not given in the 
 navy except for good and sufficient reason. 
 On board ship the promptness of his intel- 
 ligence, his decision, his self-control and 
 forceful manner had secured appreciation,
 
 138 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 and in addition to these seamanlike qual- 
 ities his officers, under his air of silent 
 reserve, had noted in him an unusual supe- 
 riority in matters outside of his calling, and 
 had never failed to treat him with special 
 consideration. 
 
 Since leaving Quebec the Mesolue had 
 t \vice touched at foreign ports, and still 
 Jean had not written to Marie. At odd 
 moments he felt a sensation of regret, his 
 conscience pricked him for the sorrow he 
 had brought to her, and on the day he 
 landed he made an inward vow that on the 
 morrow, without fail, the importunate letter 
 should be dispatched for Canada. Even 
 were the fair one not tenderly beloved, to 
 refrain from writing was quite consistent 
 with the sailor habits and turn of mind to 
 which Jean was becoming constantly more 
 and more subjected ; but in addition to 
 that he was also specially afflicted by nature 
 with that particular inertia, the inertia of 
 letter writing, than which there is nothing 
 more difficult to overcome.
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 139 
 
 And the morrow carne and went, and 
 many a morrow after it ; the image of the 
 fair young girl gradually became less dis- 
 tinct and faded from his memory ; he never 
 wrote to her.
 
 XXVII 
 
 ON a fine evening in August of that 
 same year, Jean and his mother were seated 
 at their window, their elbows resting on 
 the red cushion that covered the broad 
 ledge of granite. There had been a great 
 storm, a long and bitter disagreement 
 between the pair ; the first, it is true, since 
 the evil days of long ago. But now the 
 storm had subsided ; all was forgotten and 
 forgiven, and they were at one again. 
 
 As his compulsory period of apprentice- 
 ship was drawing to a close, it was his 
 mother's wish that he should adopt the 
 only sensible course, which was, that he 
 should remain there in Brest and take a 
 course in hydrography ; it was her belief 
 that by giving his whole mind and atten- 
 tion! to his studies he might obtain his 
 
 140
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 141 
 
 master's certificate the following year and 
 secure employment as an officer with some 
 of the great steamship lines if in the 
 Mediterranean trade so much the better 
 and then their future would be clear before 
 them. 
 
 But to Jean, who during the entire cruise 
 had not opened a book on mathematics and 
 had devoted all his attention to the more 
 practical side of his profession, it seemed 
 that what algebra and trigonometry 
 remained to him subsisted in his head in 
 the condition of a badly snarled skein, to 
 disentangle which would be beyond his 
 power, and, with a feeling of childish terror, 
 he imagined that to attempt to master those 
 abstractions would be a labor no less ardu- 
 ous than those that Hercules inflicted on 
 himself. He had not been economical and 
 saved his money, either, while visiting those 
 American ports, so that his mother's 
 embroidering;; needle would have to earn 
 
 O 
 
 subsistence for them both, and he, not over 
 well pleased with himself, did not take
 
 142 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 kindly to the idea of living, at the age of 
 twenty-one, on the product of her labor. 
 
 Never an easy subject to guide and influ- 
 ence, even when a boy, notwithstanding 
 his generous, warni-hearted disposition, he 
 now became obstinate and sullen, with eyes 
 no longer the same ; with the curt, harsh 
 voice of the old evil days when his mother 
 addressed to him an ill-timed reproach, 
 one of those well-meant but inopportune 
 reproaches that for a time cause the heart 
 to close impenetrably. 
 
 Then he opposed his will to hers with 
 silent stubbornness, for he was harboring 
 another project of his own, which tempted 
 him by the ease with which it might be 
 carried into execution, and would deliver 
 him from the dreaded mathematical course : 
 to re-enlist in the navy! Moreover, the 
 sailor's life had a strong hold on his imagin- 
 ation, by reason of that inexplicable charm 
 of which so many young men have felt the 
 influence. 
 
 And now the project was an accom-
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 143 
 
 plished fact ; lie Lad signed his liberty 
 away the day before, irrevocably ; had con- 
 cluded a pact that bound him to wear the 
 blue shirt for another five years. 
 
 When he awoke that morning, however, 
 and with returning consciousness the irrep- 
 arableness of what he had done dawned 
 on his mind, he reproached himself for his 
 own folly, and was oppressed by a bitter 
 presentiment of the evil that was to result 
 from it. He announced the news to his 
 mother while they were eating their silent 
 breakfast, treating the matter as something 
 quite in the ordinary, in a few brief, care- 
 less words. She, who had vaguely sus- 
 pected the truth, looked at him without 
 saying a word, without any expression of 
 surprise, with mournful eyes to which the 
 tears came welling ; then he, vanquished 
 in turn, took her in his arms and their 
 difference was no more. They remained 
 thus for a long time, pressed to each other's 
 bosom. in a close embrace of tenderness and 
 forgiveness, those two forsaken ones, who
 
 144 JEAN BEBNY, SAILOR 
 
 were yet more cast down by this new out- 
 look for the future. " But how, how could 
 I have done otherwise?" he said to her, 
 very gently, in a tone of kind reproach 
 and he almost succeeded in persuading her 
 that he was right. As he was all in all to 
 her, her joy and delight that he and she 
 were reconciled once more were such that 
 she readily yielded to his arguments, and 
 did not discuss the issue further, or seek to 
 restrain him. 
 
 The whole of that afternoon they 
 devoted to reconstructing their plans on 
 these altered foundations, exchanging 
 views how they were to act to make the 
 most of the new situation. 
 
 He would start on a cruise at the earliest 
 moment possible; fortunately, his name 
 was among the first of those available. 
 An officer whom he had known on board 
 the HesolueTnadi promised to get a berth 
 for him on the Navarin, that would sail in 
 a couple of weeks to circumnavigate the 
 world, a ten months' cruise. He would
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 145 
 
 apply himself and work during this long 
 voyage, in which he would have nothing to 
 distract him, separated as he would be 
 from civilized life. He would be saving 
 and come back with money in his pocket, 
 which he could do now that he had the 
 pay of a quartermaster. His position as 
 a sailor would entitle him to attend the 
 lectures of the course without paying so 
 many others do so and once his examina- 
 tion passed successfully he would have a 
 right to demand his discharge, and his five 
 years would be reduced to two. 
 
 Entirely reconciled and at peace with 
 each other, looking bravely forward to the 
 future, they contemplated from their win- 
 dow the summer day drawing to an end. 
 They pursued their train of thought in 
 silence, allowing their eyes to wander over 
 those mean and squalid surroundings that 
 chance had allotted them as their horizon, 
 and where by degrees external objects 
 were growing dim and indistinct in the 
 gathering dusk : the little terrace garden
 
 146 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 underneath, the granite walls, the slated 
 roofs, the tall chimneys boldly profiled 
 against the golden sky. For them the 
 uncertain future depended entirely on 
 their strength of will and power to labor ; 
 but they trusted and were not afraid, and 
 more than ever, now that that evil crisis 
 was gone by which had caused them both 
 to suffer so and in which for a brief 
 moment she had had a glimpse of the 
 supreme ill, the miserable void arising 
 from the feeling that she could not trust 
 him.
 
 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 IT seemed as if Jean's life was doomed 
 to be dogged by an unrelenting fatality ; 
 unwise decisions, hopes unrealized, plans 
 that came to nausrht : these were the things 
 
 o o 
 
 that fate appeared to have in store for him. 
 He did not sail on that cruise around the 
 world ; the Navarin^s complement was filled 
 without him. Other seamen of his grade 
 had unexpectedly returned from sea, and 
 in accordance with certain inflexible regu- 
 lations of the service had been placed at 
 the head of the available list, where no one 
 ever thinks of yielding his place. He spent 
 the winter at Brest with his mother. 
 
 Thanks to the increased pay afforded by 
 his higher rank, they were able to command 
 a few more comforts for themselves. He 
 spent nothing on himself except what was 
 actually necessary, and on Sundays his 
 
 147
 
 148 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 mother found herself enabled to appear with 
 him in the streets attired with some ap- 
 proach to her former elegance. 
 
 Sometimes he would* bring a friend or 
 two home with him; not those honest, 
 rough and ready young men of the coast, 
 be it understood, in whose society he found 
 such pleasure, but youths of good family, 
 who, for one reason or another, had entered 
 the navy and, like himself, were men of 
 politeness and refinement fallen from their 
 proper sphere. He even invited them to 
 dine with him occasionally in the little 
 dining-room, where evidences of increased 
 prosperity were visible, where the hand- 
 some vases that they had brought from 
 Antibes were filled with flowers for the 
 first time since the flight into exile, and on 
 these occasions he manifested much anxiety 
 that the repast should be served in con- 
 formity with the usages of good society, 
 and that his mother should present the 
 appearance of a lady. He would apologize 
 for the extreme modesty of the service, and
 
 JEAN BERN7, SAILOR 149 
 
 eagerly embraced every opportunity to di- 
 rect the conversation upon the topic of 
 their past, as is frequently the way with 
 people who have seen better days, having 
 a good deal to say of tneir mansion at 
 Autibes and the silver plate that they had 
 been forced to sell, drawing the long bow 
 a little, and exaggerating the state in which 
 they had lived in other days. 
 
 The friend whom he thought most of 
 was a true-hearted and timid youth named 
 Morel, son of a Protestant minister in cen- 
 tral France, whom dreams of travel and a 
 longing to behold the sea had attracted 
 from his home ; a wretched sailor, more- 
 over, as he could not well help being aware 
 of, from the attentions that were constantly 
 being bestowed on him by the terrible 
 sergeant at arms. 
 
 Jean had at first taken him under his 
 protecting wing out of sheer pity, and after- 
 ward had become attached to him. And it 
 was not long before lie was greatly sur- 
 prised at discovering in this good-natured
 
 150 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 protector, thorough-paced sailor that he was, 
 a refinement of which he had not deemed 
 him capable, and conceptions of the van- 
 ished Orient, and light, and death, more 
 mysterious and deeper and wider even than 
 his own. Owing to their many points of 
 similarity, and to the many more of diverg- 
 ence, these two men, who were liable at 
 any moment to be ordered away to the op- 
 posite ends of the earth and never behold 
 each other's face again, had incontinently 
 conceived a mutual liking. 
 
 In the same street where Jean's apart- 
 ments were, this Morel had a little chamber 
 for which he paid ten francs a mouth, 
 where he stowed away his books, his only 
 earthly treasure, as he bought them, and 
 whither he retired to pore over them. In 
 this little library, the books in which had 
 been selected with great care, Jean, whose 
 approval was always reserved for the quint- 
 essence, would rummage somewhat scorn- 
 
 7 O 
 
 fully; and it amused Morel to see this 
 friend of his, so little a man of letters, open
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 151 
 
 a volume, skim over two or three pages, and 
 say in a tone that admitted no contradic- 
 tion: "No, none of that for me." "But 
 why ? " the pale and studious young man 
 would ask. " Well how am I to explain 
 my meaning that book says nothing to 
 me, that's all." And each time he was 
 right ; the book might be a work of erudi- 
 tion and well written, but it had no inform- 
 ing soul, or, if it had, a very small one. 
 The books were few in number, moreover, 
 that reached the level and met the require- 
 ments of his misty, nebulous ideal, to which 
 he himself would have been puzzled to 
 give definite form and shape. 
 
 The romance of contemporaneous man- 
 ners, even the very best, had no interest 
 for him, because his simplicity had never 
 fathomed the complications of the life of 
 the present day ; it either soared high aloft 
 or else diverted itself with the veriest trifles. 
 Thus, to explain, he could read with pleas- 
 ure three times in succession a chapter of 
 the Apocalypse, or Flaubert's " Temptation
 
 152 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 of Saint Anthony," or some sombre ante- 
 diluvian vision of Rosny's; this was the 
 kind of mental pabulum he craved, or else, 
 when he desired relaxation for his mind, 
 the stupid buffooneries and inane folly of 
 the Chat-Noir. 
 
 On the whole Morel's acquaintance 
 seemed to exert an unlooked-for influence 
 on him, teaching him to view matters in a 
 broader and more practical light, for he had 
 never read so much as he did in his friend's 
 company during those long winter evenings. 
 
 Now and then, however, he would break 
 away from his books and the honest fireside 
 to run after women. On such occasions he 
 would take almost as much pains to hide 
 his folly from the sedate Morel, who 
 believed him to be at his mother's, as from 
 his mother, who thought he was at Morel's. 
 He got out of the scrape as best he could 
 when detected, employing the lies of a 
 schoolboy, the stratagems of a red Indian 
 which were successful, sometimes.
 
 XXIX 
 
 As winter was drawing to a close and 
 his twenty-second birthday was approach- 
 ing, he received orders to hold himself in 
 readiness for a cruise, which, in his forget- 
 ful indifference, he had ceased to desire. 
 He was to be forwarded with a detachment 
 to another port, whence he was to proceed 
 to Dakar and there, for eighteen months, 
 form one of the crew of a gunboat on the 
 Senegal station. 
 
 He knew something of Dakar, the 
 Hesolue having put in there once, and the 
 mention only of the name Senegal was suffi- 
 cient to bring before him visions of dreary 
 sandy wastes, of languorous evenings, and 
 the sun's blood-red disk, enlarged to pre- 
 ternatural size, sinking into the broad 
 bosom of the desert. So, then, he was 
 
 153
 
 154 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 about to penetrate to the heart of the 
 country of the Blacks, by the mighty river 
 that serves as a path for Europeans. The 
 thought of it all had a strange attraction 
 for him, especially the neighborhood of the 
 great Saharian desert, the impenetrable 
 marches of the Moors. 
 
 By a special favor, and one that is seldom 
 granted, he was accorded his liberty on 
 parole for the last evening he was to spend 
 on shore ; the detachment would pass be- 
 neath his window at midnight on its way 
 to the railway station, when he was to 
 hasten down and join it upon a signal 
 given by the whistle of the commander. 
 
 The clergyman's son, his faithful friend, 
 was invited to share his farewell dinner. 
 On the floor, beside his seat at table, lay 
 the white duck sack containing his clothing 
 and effects, packed and closed, ready to be 
 slung from his shoulder. Mother, son and 
 guest felt the influence of that profound 
 oppression which prevails at the instant of 
 some decisive crisis, as when death is im-
 
 JEAN SERNY, SAILOR 155 
 
 minent, or a parting that may be final ; the 
 three ate little, and in almost unbroken 
 silence. 
 
 Jean saw that his mother had placed her 
 hat and cloak where she could reach them 
 easily, preparatory to going out, and he 
 divined her intention. " No, mamma, you 
 must not go to the station," he said to her 
 very gently, taking in his the hand that 
 lay beside him on the table-cloth. And in 
 answer to her tearful look of disappoint- 
 ment, that seemed to ask humbly why : 
 " Well, the others will be there, you see. 
 No, don't go ; I would rather give you my 
 farewell kiss here. Morel can go with me 
 if he feels inclined." 
 
 After dinner they seated themselves 
 before the fire expectantly, talking very 
 little, their conversation broken by long 
 intervals of silence, the two sailors smoking 
 cigarettes, the mother seated beside her 
 boy, and holding one of his hands in both 
 her own. 
 
 "Mother dear, before I go show me
 
 156 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 those things you know what I mean, the 
 things that are so dear to us the coat, the 
 cane, everything I wish to look on them 
 once more." And when she hesitated and 
 glanced at the stranger who was sitting 
 there : " What ! on Morel's account ? It 
 matters not to me, his being here. He will 
 understand." 
 
 Then she produced them, one after an- 
 other, the precious relics he had called for, 
 and spread them before him on the table. 
 He sat for a long time contemplating them 
 in rapt silence, with bowed head, and the 
 smoke of the fragrant tobacco of the East 
 came from his lips at regular intervals in 
 thin blue jets and rose in spirals on the 
 air. And as they were removed and van- 
 ished from his sight, enveloped anew in 
 their muslin cerements, he experienced that 
 same impression of hopeless parting, that 
 sensation of " nevermore," that had visited 
 him that evening when for the last time 
 he closed behind him the garden-gate of 
 Carigou.
 
 JKAX BKRSY, SAILOR 157 
 
 Suddenly, through the half-open window, 
 there canie a dull, distant sound, disturbing 
 the silence' of the slumbering street, the 
 cadenced tramp of feet upon the stones; 
 then the shrill note of a boatswain's whistle 
 sounded in their ears. What, so soon ! 
 Could it be the detachment ? The clock 
 must be slow, then ; they had not dreamed 
 it was so late. Jean, in a half -dazed condi- 
 tion, folded his mother in his arms, throw- 
 ing all his heart and soul into that last 
 embrace, then, slinging his sack across his 
 shoulder and followed by Morel, hurried 
 down the granite staircase four steps at a 
 time. 
 
 Holding a lamp to light his steps, numb 
 and chilled with grief, speechless, she 
 watched him as he hastened down the stairs, 
 then flew to the window and threw it wide 
 for another glimpse of him in the street 
 below; but all she saw was a confused 
 group of men moving away, an indistinct 
 black mass receding in the darkness under 
 a drizzle of cold rain. He, on the other
 
 158 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 hand, turning and looking up, could dis- 
 cern her very plainly where she stood, her 
 form outlined like a picture in- the frame 
 of the illuminated window. When the 
 black mass was lost to sight and the tramp 
 of feet sounded faint in the distance, she 
 closed the sash and was alone. Dry-eyed, 
 benumbed and stupefied, trembling in every 
 limb and her forehead bedewed with a cold 
 perspiration, with a sensation unknown to 
 her hitherto, that none of Jean's other 
 departures had caused her, of utter loneli- 
 ness and desolation, she sank upon a chair 
 before the expiring fire, and mechanically 
 took from the stone slab of the mantel in 
 her tremulous fingers a cigarette, his last 
 cigarette, that even now was exhaling its 
 parting breath.
 
 XXX 
 
 ON the day of his arrival at the port to 
 which he had been dispatched he was in- 
 formed that another quartermaster had 
 returned to barracks the day before, with a 
 claim that took precedence over his, and 
 was to have his position on the vessel sta- 
 tioned off Senegal. 
 
 It is in this way that many sailors' lives 
 are passed in traveling on bootless errands. 
 Dispatched in this direction and in that, 
 like bales of merchandise, and, for the most 
 part, desiring nothing so much as active ser- 
 vice at sea, they are frequently condemned 
 to long periods of inactivity at the naval 
 stations, where, at evening, they seem to 
 enjoy themselves so well. 
 
 Ended, or at least put off indefinitely, 
 were his anticipations of a protracted 
 cruise. 
 
 159
 
 160 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 His place in the list of those available 
 for duty assigned him a position in the 
 " Reserve "- which consists of a number of 
 unarmed vessels that lie inactive, moored 
 to the dock at navy yards, for indefinite 
 periods of time. For him, it was as if he 
 had been stranded in some strange and 
 unlooked-for way in this little slow and 
 lifeless town, with its rows of white houses, 
 so trim and uniform, where the broad and 
 unfrequented avenues ended in the old ver- 
 durous ramparts. In this tranquil seaport, 
 surrounded by wide grass-grown plains, 
 strange as it may seem, there was no view 
 of the sea obtainable, and were it not for 
 the sailors who enlivened the streets at 
 evening with their singing, one might hnve 
 thought himself in one of the central prov- 
 inces. This new description of banish- 
 ment, which sentenced him to live on shore, 
 and for a space of time that seemed to him 
 unwarrantably long, produced in him a sen- 
 sation of depressing melancholy; he had 
 not reckoned on being exiled to a place so
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 161 
 
 near his mother, and never had he experi- 
 enced a feeling of such solitariness as he did 
 now. 
 
 And then he realized more fully than he 
 had ever done before the low position that 
 the common sailor occupies in the social 
 scale, for there were certain degrading 
 offices that until now he had not been 
 called on to perform. Among all the men 
 collected on this " Reserve," there was not 
 one fit for him to associate with as a com- 
 panion. The best he could do was to form 
 loose ties with two or three young fellows, 
 cottagers by birth and very young and 
 simple-minded, with whom, thanks to their 
 common fund of childlike gayety, he man- 
 aged to pass an hour occasionally, but to 
 whom he was infinitely superior in intelli- 
 gence and aspiration. 
 
 Ever abounding in good intentions, he 
 said to himself that he would endeavor to 
 secure an exchange and leave the station ; 
 that meanwhile he would live a virtuous 
 and sober life, saving hi's money and sleep-
 
 162 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 ing of nights in his hammock, although he 
 found the sparsely populated ship and the 
 deserted arsenal a very lonesome and 
 melancholy domicile. 
 
 A tall, straight, well-built young fellow 
 of twenty -two, with great, gentle eyes, with 
 silky black beard, he might be seen stroll- 
 ing in the streets at evening, with leisurely 
 step and lofty manner, his bronzed throat 
 and the beginning of his mighty shoulders 
 revealed beneath the ample turned-back 
 collar of his blue shirt. With a fine 
 assumption of indifference he shot careless 
 glances at the girls and maidens as they 
 passed, of whom none, however, seemed to 
 rise to the height of his ideal, and he never 
 failed at nightfall, before the filing of the 
 sunset gun, to be within the gates of the 
 arsenal, which closed and made him a 
 prisoner until the dawning of another day.
 
 XXXI 
 
 BUT on a certain Sunday evening, as lie 
 was strolling without definite aim or object, 
 alone, as was his unvarying habit, and with 
 his assumed air of gravity, he entered the 
 courtyard of the railway station to witness 
 the arrival of the train and amuse himself 
 by scrutinizing the faces of the by -passers 
 and perhaps also, although he did not 
 admit the impeachment to himself, with an 
 embryonic intention of inaugurating a flir- 
 tation, in the pleasant March .twilight, 
 when the days had already commenced to 
 lengthen and be more vernal. 
 
 O 
 
 A bustling scene of Sunday life and 
 gayety presented itself to his inspection, a 
 crowd of worthy people returning from the 
 country. He could not help smiling at 
 the quaint head gear of some among the 
 women. 
 
 163
 
 164 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 " You haven't lost the little satchel, 
 Madeleine, I hope ? " inquired, in a tone 
 that its tragic anxiety made comical, a good 
 woman wearing a fringed mantilla, plainly 
 a careful mother and housewife. 
 
 He looked about him for the girl who 
 was called Madeleine, with a feeling of 
 amusement that he should know her name 
 before he had ever seen her. She had 
 passed on, and was walking away with a 
 rapid step, but turned to show that she 
 had the little leather bag in her possession, 
 and in the second's space that was granted 
 him the little that Jean could see of her 
 regular profile seemed to him exquisite. 
 And then, as the surging wave of passen- 
 gers streamed out through the archway and 
 spread over the broad avenue, he followed 
 her, enveloping her with a look that took 
 in every detail of her dress and person. 
 Seen, even as he saw her, from behind, she 
 was altogether charming, supple and slender 
 of form, with delicately molded neck and 
 head, attired with a simple elegance that
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 165 
 
 had in it something of distinction. He cast 
 a glance of inspection also on the parents ; 
 they appeared to be small trades -people, or 
 perhaps mechanics in easy circumstances, a 
 condition that rendered it out of the ques- 
 tion for him to aspire to their acquaintance, 
 roving sailor that he was, and ineligible for 
 marital honors. 
 
 He hurried his steps, however, so as to 
 pass them and secure another glimpse of 
 the girl's face, with the desire and hope 
 that he might be disappointed on seeing 
 her more near at hand. When we have 
 caught a peep at a pretty girl along our 
 way and find she has produced an impres- 
 sion on, us too deep for our peace of mind, 
 it is a comfort, if, when we come to look at 
 her later on, we find she is only an ordinary 
 mortal ; it alleviates the feeling of profound 
 regret inspired by the thought that for us 
 all that beauty is as if it were not. 
 
 He was now quite close to the girl whose 
 name was Madeleine, hanging back so as to 
 defer the moment when he should pass her,
 
 166 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 contemplating her shell-like ear, the place 
 where the dense growth of hair started 
 from her neck and was carried up and coiled 
 in a great lustrous braid like a skein of 
 softest silk. Then, quickening his pace a 
 bit, he opened up to view that oval line of 
 cheek and chin, which, when it is itself 
 regular and beautiful, rarely fails to be an 
 index to the remainder of the features. At 
 last he made up his mind that he would 
 pass her, and did so, with head erect, eying 
 her from top to toe, and encountering her 
 look, which sank, but not too quickly, 
 before his. 
 
 And his mind was even yet more ill at 
 ease, for alas, she was delicious ! Great 
 warm brown eyes, very deeply set in their 
 orbits and rather sombre, with a slightly 
 frowning expression, as if behind them 
 there were will and intellect. A straight 
 profile ; the chin a little prominent, but 
 irreproachably pure in outline. A rare 
 characteristic of that face, and one that 
 attracted attention to it at first sight, was
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 167 
 
 its absolute and entire simplicity of line 
 and color. The features seemed to have 
 been molded by a sober and self-reliant 
 hand, whose aim it was to express nobility 
 of form with the smallest possible amount 
 of detail. The curves, so gentle, yet so 
 firmly drawn, of cheek and neck, appeared 
 to have been produced at a single stroke, 
 complete in all their grace and beauty, 
 rendering the labor of retouching super- 
 fluous. The whole had then been left of a 
 uniformly pale shade of pink hydrangea, 
 which was the color of the translucent clay 
 from which that fair face was molded. 
 The pale gold of the hair, moreover, 
 approaching flaxen, completed the harmony 
 of subdued tints, than which nothing 
 could be more distinguished. And the 
 startling, almost unnatural, tranquillity of 
 the ensemble gave an added life and -lustre 
 to the brown eyes, which, youthful and 
 ardent, shone from their deep setting 
 beneath the thick brows contracted in an 
 involuntary frown.
 
 168 JEAN BERN Y, SAILOR 
 
 He relaxed his speed again, that she 
 might pass him in turn and enable him to 
 secure another view. The relatives, also, 
 were this time subjected to a closer 
 examination than before : they were father, 
 mother, and an elderly lady, probably an 
 aunt ; cheerful, wholesome-looking bodies, 
 who might have been good-looking in their 
 time. And what a simple air of honesty 
 there was about them ! He hesitated to 
 follow them, with a sensation of remorse, 
 as if his pursuit might do her harm. 
 
 He continued his espionage, but more 
 prudently, keeping a good distance between 
 them and cloaking himself in the shadows 
 
 O 
 
 of the gathering darkness, to the end that 
 he might at least learn where they lived, 
 and not lose trace entirely of pretty Made- 
 leine. 
 
 When he had taken note of the unpre- 
 tentious little house within which they 
 entered (it was in the upper town and 
 faced a small garden), he made his way 
 down again toward the central quarters,
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 169 
 
 and from there to the localities wLere the 
 jolly mariner disports himself at evening. 
 It was too late to think of returning to 
 quarters ; the gates of the arsenal were 
 closed by that time, so, to change the cur- 
 rent of his thoughts, he entered a music 
 hall, where facile conquests were obtainable. 
 
 But he was surprised when he became 
 aware the following morning that that 
 pretty colorless face and those ardent 
 young eyes had filched from him some por- 
 tion of his being. On account of that girl, 
 whom he had seen but for a fleeting 
 moment, he had lost his sense of isolation 
 in that strange seaport ; the dead-alive little 
 town was less oppressively tranquil, the 
 old ramparts had not so much the aspect 
 of a prison. It was the delicious mirage of 
 love, which transforms all the present and 
 obliterates all the past. 
 
 At nightfall, as soon as he was free, he 
 bent his steps toward her house again, to 
 see if fortune would favor him with 
 another glimpse of her.
 
 170 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 And behold, at that very moment she 
 came hastening up, as if in answer to his 
 summons. He trembled as he recognized 
 her. She was coming home alone, appar- 
 ently in something of a hurry, carrying 
 in her hand the little leather satchel that 
 had been the innocent cause of so much 
 mischief. She was neatly gloved, and her 
 attire, more simple even than it had been 
 the day before, had an indescribable air of 
 appropriateness and gentility. 
 
 She was coming home from work, that 
 was plain enough ; therefore she was noth- 
 ing more than a little working-girl, doubt- 
 less returning unaccompanied to the 
 paternal fireside every evening at the same 
 hour which would tend greatly to facili- 
 tate matters. By her look, which was 
 averted quicker than he could have desired, 
 he saw that she had remarked him the day 
 before, and was troubled at his appearing 
 again in her path. 
 
 All his good resolutions of confining
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 171 
 
 liimself to the ship and saving Ms money 
 were scattered to the winds. That very 
 evening he went into the town and hired 
 for himself a small chamber in a sailor's 
 boarding-house, over a cafe that had not 
 many patrons, in a linden-shaded street 
 adjacent to the navy yard. To silence the 
 voice of conscience he said to himself that 
 he would bring his text-books and work 
 there nights ; it would be so much more 
 convenient for him than on those old ships, 
 where he got so little light from the oil- 
 lamps in their rusty iron gratings. 
 
 It was an entirely new experience for 
 him to be living in this way, having a 
 room on shore all to himself and being his 
 own master, just like a young civilian, and 
 by fits and starts he was alternately either 
 melancholy or pleased as a little child over 
 the sudden change. He thought constantly 
 of her, delighted to have found out that 
 her name was Madeleine, which somehow 
 seemed to bring him a little nearer to her.
 
 XXXII 
 
 Two days later, just as she was leaving 
 the dressmaker's establishment where she 
 was employed, a small boy, in whose ap- 
 pearance there was nothing to arouse dis- 
 trust, handed her the following missive 
 from him : 
 
 Miss MADELEINE : 
 
 Someone whom you have already seen three 
 times, and whose name is Jean, will meet you 
 presently at the spot where he saw you last even- 
 ing. He begs you will permit him to speak to 
 you, if only for an instant, provided there is no 
 one passing. JEAN. 
 
 And now he was waiting in the gloaming, 
 in a retired street of venerable white 
 houses, the sidewalk bordered on one side 
 by a row of lindens and on the other by 
 garden walls, the route by which she hab- 
 
 172
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 173 
 
 itually returned to the paternal dwelling. 
 It was really a most unusual display of 
 ceremony for him, accustomed as he was to 
 easy successes among that class of little 
 girls who trip home at night alone and 
 unattended, to write that letter ; but then 
 this Madeleine was so little like the others, 
 so little like, that he did not even know 
 what he was going to ask of her or say to 
 her. And he paced his beat, so many steps 
 this way, so many that, or leaned with his 
 back against the trunks of the lindens, 
 impatient for her to come; and at the same 
 time agitated by an emotion that was 
 closely akin to terror at the thought of 
 seeing her turn the corner of the street. 
 
 She, even before she opened the note 
 the first that anyone had ever presumed to 
 write to her felt instinctively that it was 
 from him. The poor child had had a 
 lonely life of it, Of a proud and imagina- 
 tive nature, she had been brought up in 
 the austerity of a Protestant household, and 
 until that day had looked with scorn on
 
 174 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 those among her companions of the shop 
 who suffered the attentions of " beaux " ; 
 and now here she was, sanctioning a pro- 
 ceeding that was so entirely novel to her 
 without astonishment or anger because 
 that proceeding came from him. In those 
 three days Jean's good looks and handsome 
 eyes had occupied a commanding place in 
 her imagination. She was disturbed in 
 mind, with a disturbance to which until 
 then she had been a stranger, a vertigo 
 that made men, trees and houses reel and 
 dance before her eyes and all the more 
 because the audacious letter that had 
 worked the spell had been given her quite 
 near the place of meeting, affording her no 
 time to reflect, to change her route, to 
 make up her mind to anything. And con- 
 tinuing on mechanically in the road to 
 which she was accustomed, her ears ring- 
 ing, her knees weakening under her, she 
 soon came, as if transported thither against 
 her will, to the corner of the street and 
 turned into the lonely lane, between the
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 1V5 
 
 garden walls and beheld him, him, a 
 dozen steps away, advancing to meet her. 
 
 To hear for the first time the sound of a 
 woman's voice whom one has come to love 
 for her face and outward appearance is a 
 sensation that is capable of causing either 
 delight or disappointment. When, before 
 he had uttered a word, she began to speak, 
 Jean listened with rapture to Madeleine's 
 voice, which was calm and deliberate, 
 pitched on a low key, very grave and very 
 youthful, like the voice of a growing boy 
 that has not yet assumed its definite 
 tonality. 
 
 " Oh, sir ! Can it be possible here in 
 the public street, and in your sailor's 
 dress ! 
 
 " In sailor's dress ! Ah, true ; I had not 
 thought of it. But if I return to-morrow 
 in civilian attire, will you speak to me? 
 Will you, truly ? Come, now, give me your 
 promise for to-morrow." 
 
 " Well, yes ; I will," she replied, raising 
 her brown eyes, which encountered the
 
 176 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 blue eyes in their setting of black velvet 
 brows. They smiled on her, the blue eyes, 
 with a glad look of gratitude, childishly 
 soft and- gentle in the masculine face, with 
 a dash of sauciness, and the protecting 
 expression of a great nobleman. 
 
 "That is a bargain, then," Jean gayly 
 answered. " Good-night, Miss Madeleine." 
 He doffed his cap to her, bowing slightly 
 with a charmingly graceful air, and went 
 his way with a firm and rapid step, skim- 
 ming over the pavement and scarce able to 
 restrain his desire to run and jump, his 
 mind lightened of a great load, no longer 
 fearing to be repulsed by that grave-faced 
 young creature. He loved her now ten 
 times more than he had done before, and 
 thought ecstatically of what the morrow 
 had in store for him.
 
 XXXIII 
 
 " MY father ? He was a quartermaster's 
 mate in the navy. But he is superannuated 
 now," said, on another evening, in the 
 solitude of the same lindens, the same grave 
 young voice. 
 
 " "And your mother your mother is still 
 living?" 
 
 " Oh, yes ; and there is also Aunt Mel- 
 anie, who makes her home with us. That 
 evening, when we were returning from the 
 station, she was behind me, wearing a gray 
 hat. Don't you remember ? " (He always 
 addressed her as if she were a child, but 
 with the most perfect respect, with never 
 a word of love.) 
 
 After a moment's silence she went on 
 in a troubled, half -frightened way, casting 
 down her eyes and touching in turn with 
 the toe of her shoe, as if it were a task she 
 
 177
 
 178 JEAN BEENT, SAILOR 
 
 had allotted herself, each of the cobble- 
 stones that raised their heads among the 
 dusty, sickly grass : 
 
 " I saw in the beginning that you were 
 not a common sailor like' the rest of them, 
 Monsieur Jean." 
 
 " Mon Dieu, in fact well, perhaps I am 
 not. But I am none the better for that, I 
 assure you." Shrouding himself in an air 
 of mystery, he parried in this manner every 
 indirect attempt to question him in relation 
 to his past, with a few careless words of 
 bravado. Then her imagination would 
 construct a story such as we read in 
 romances; he was some prodigal son, some 
 scion of an illustrious family constrained 
 to silence.
 
 XXXIV 
 
 THINGS had now reached such a pass 
 that they walked together regularly every 
 evening over a short course covering fifty 
 or sixty metres, never more in the upper 
 portion of that same street, where there 
 were no windows and no by-passers, which 
 lay sluraberotisly silent between the old 
 whitewashed garden walls. The lindens 
 that arched the lane had budded and 
 bloomed, and now were constructing above 
 the lover's heads a dome of verdure ; the 
 evenings were becoming longer, longer and 
 brighter, as Time in his inexorable flight 
 hurried them on toward summer. And 
 April was advancing with a rapidity that 
 they would have been glad could they have 
 checked. 
 
 But April was not propitious to their 
 
 179
 
 180 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 loves, the future of which seemed so un- 
 certain, and which contrived to vegetate 
 among those contracted and depressing sur- 
 roundings, and never aired themselves ex- 
 cept along that narrow footpath of white 
 flagstones margined with green grass. The 
 heavens, too, were frowningly sombre over 
 their heads, closing in on them like the 
 contracted terrestrial scene, constantly filled 
 Avith gray clouds whence the rain drops 
 came pattering down on the young leaves. 
 
 They might walk as slowly as they 
 would, even under the pelting of such a 
 shower as drives ordinary mortals, not lov- 
 ers, to seek shelter ; the end of the street 
 was reached all too soon, putting an end to 
 their rather incoherent conversation, where 
 intervals of silence so abounded. It is hard 
 to explain how much of the ephemeral 
 seemed to be mingled with the very essence 
 of their love ; vague menaces of ending, 
 and of death, and of oblivion, were hover- 
 ing in the air above them. 
 
 Jean, accustomed as he was to the gayer
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 181 
 
 springtimes of bis bright land of Provence, 
 was disagreeably impressed by this chill, 
 shivering April, devoid of sunshine, by this 
 luxuriant vegetation, so fresh and green, 
 beneath the inky sky, whither the neigh- 
 boring ocean dispatched its breezes and 
 great black clouds. His sojourn in the lit- 
 tle stagnant town had certain aspects of tran- 
 quillity that reminded him of that time he 
 had spent at Rhodes, and of the evenings 
 when there came down the hills to meet 
 him, at the same twilight hour and by 
 paths equally white, a young Greek maiden. 
 But now his melancholy was of a dif- 
 ferent sort, graver, and, above all, more in- 
 fused with love infinitely more infused 
 with love. He was conscious of such an 
 inroad on his affections as he had never 
 known before, and with his boyish unre- 
 flectiveness he yielded to it. Whither was 
 he tending ? What object had he in view 
 regarding that little Madeleine ? He could 
 not have told himself. As far back as 
 their second meeting he had seen, merely
 
 182 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 by her fearless confidence and her way of 
 looking him straight in the face, the kind 
 of girl she was, and that he could never 
 hope to make her his mistress of a month. 
 As for marrying her, he never thought of 
 such a thing ; pride of birth and early 
 education forbade it. He never admitted 
 that he had lost caste when he lost his for- 
 tune ; he was become a common sailor, and 
 could take the rough and the smooth as 
 they came to him as indifferently as the 
 next man, could divert himself with Tom, 
 Dick and Harry in a pothouse if he felt so 
 inclined, but was as fastidious as the most 
 consummate dandy at bottpm as regarded 
 everything connected with feminine ele- 
 gance. 
 
 He had never even so much as touched 
 her hand. Not pressing closely to each 
 other's side, as is the way with lovers, but 
 parted by a little distance, they paced their 
 short beat along the shaded sidewalk in a 
 constant state of watchful apprehension, 
 with eyes and ears alert, talking in tones
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 183 
 
 scarcely above a whisper, but saying tilings 
 tliat miglit have been heard of all the 
 world ; such childish, artless prattle, so void 
 of all rhyme or reason, the whole charm of 
 which lay in the inflections of their voice. 
 
 And when they had come to the end of 
 the lane, when Madeleine had given him 
 her pretty look of farewell, he would take 
 his post under one of the lindens to watch 
 her as she moved away, turned the corner, 
 and vanished in the noisy, more thickly 
 populated street of working people where 
 she lived. Even in the view thus afforded 
 by her retreating figure she was altogether 
 charming ; her slender form, the form of a 
 child that has but just attained its growth, 
 was erect as a poplar, with shoulders well 
 thrown back ; in her lithe, unhurried 
 movements was the grace arising from 
 youth and health. 
 
 As soon as she had disappeared at the 
 street corner he would go away, conscious 
 that his life would be a blank to him until 
 the following evening, and not knowing
 
 184 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 what use to make of his time. Then he 
 would try the effect of returning to his 
 little chamber and sitting down to his 
 mathematics, a little common sense and a 
 little anxiety for the future combining to 
 urge him to the attempt. 
 
 But who was ever known to work on a 
 balmy evening in the lazy springtime, with 
 dreams of love floating through his brain ? 
 Moreover there was everything to tempt 
 him, liberty, solitude, even that civilian 
 suit that he had purchased for her sake 
 and that had swallowed up all his savings ; 
 that suit which facilitated his enterprises 
 with certain beflounced and befeathered 
 beauties, less retiring than Madeleine in 
 their disposition. 
 
 And most frequently he would go and 
 finish up his evening in the haunts of 
 pleasure, among the music halls.
 
 XXXV 
 
 " IN times gone by, when father used to 
 go to sea," she said to him, " we were a 
 great deal more comfortably situated than 
 we are now, Monsieur Jean. But you 
 know how it is in the navy as soon as one 
 reaches the age of retirement. That is 
 the reason why I have been working at the 
 dressmaker's for the past year. But that's 
 just how it is ; I am only a little sewing 
 girl now, and likely enough I shall continue 
 to be one for the remainder of my days." 
 
 The last audacious sentence was enun- 
 ciated in hesitating tones it was so like a 
 point blank question addressed to Jean as 
 to his intentions and when she had finished 
 her cheeks w r ere rosy red, and she averted 
 her face, waiting for an answer that did 
 not come. 
 
 185
 
 186 JEAN BEJRNY, SAILOR 
 
 But what did come, inexorable as fate, 
 was the rain, bent on spoiling their stolen 
 interview ; they could hear it pattering on 
 the young leaves of the lindens with quick- 
 coming drops, with a sound as if someone 
 were emptying the contents of a watering 
 pot upon a sheet of paper. Jean did not 
 mind it ; his blue jacket and bronzed neck 
 had seen worse weather than this, and he 
 could stand and take a wetting without 
 flinching; but she made haste to put up 
 her umbrella, and he, after the pretty way 
 in which she had just confessed their pov- 
 erty to him, noticed how carefully she pro- 
 tected her cheap little hat, that was never 
 changed, and her gloves, that were also con- 
 demned to constant service, and which ex- 
 hibited marks of artistic darning at the 
 finger-ends. He felt within him a sudden 
 emotion of tenderness and pity for those 
 poor little belongings of hers, to which 
 he saw her devote such anxious care, and 
 that emotion served to show the extent to 
 which she had penetrated his affections,
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 187 
 
 toward those profound regions where our 
 impressions inscribe themselves in charac- 
 ters of fire, the more to make us suffer 
 afterward. 
 
 " And I," he said in a frank, jovial voice, 
 "do you think that I am rich, Mademoiselle 
 Madeleine? There was a time once, per- 
 haps, but The one thing certain is that 
 
 I was brought up by relatives who who 
 never expected to see me the sailor that I 
 
 am become. But now " Then he went 
 
 on to tell to that most attentive of little 
 listeners the story of his happy boyhood ; 
 his failure at the examination ; how he had 
 come to assume the blue jacket and bell- 
 mouthed trousers of the sailor; the sale of 
 the house at Antibes, and his mother now 
 living at Brest in a poor lodging uusuited 
 to her station, an exile from the land of her 
 fathers. 
 
 And Madeleine earned home with her 
 that evening a heart full to overflowing of 
 joy and gladness. It was an easy matter 
 for her now to give up the romantic dreams
 
 188 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 that she had been cherishing concerning 
 her friend's past life ; she felt that he was 
 brought so much more close to her ! The 
 possibility, the radiant possibility, appeared 
 to her for the first time that she might be 
 his wife, with the enchanting prospect of 
 seeino- him installed for all time at the 
 
 O 
 
 domestic hearth and board, and also in a 
 cheerful bedroom on the first floor, facing 
 the street, that Aunt Melanie had promised 
 ever so long ago to furnish against the 
 time there should be a young couple ready 
 to take possession of it. And her con- 
 science ceased to trouble her, moreover, her 
 remorseful feelings, little puritan that she 
 was, now that there was a prospect that 
 all would be made straight in ac honest, 
 decent manner. 
 
 He had told his story in one of those 
 unreflecting moments that were so charac- 
 teristic of the man, and not more than on 
 the day before, or on any other day, had 
 the idea of marrying her crossed his mind 
 when he took leave of her with a pleasant
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 189 
 
 smile and these lightly uttered words : " A 
 sailor and a sewing girl we can give each 
 other the right hand of friendship, you see, 
 Mademoiselle Madeleine." 
 
 Meanwhile his aimless attachment for 
 this strange little comrade, so pleasant an 
 object for the eye to rest on, continued to 
 wax and grow within him, all the time 
 assuming a character of chaste tranquillity, 
 almost of immateriality. When perfect 
 respect exists, conjointly with the certain 
 assurance of insuperable obstacles, the love 
 of the senses may go on living and growing, 
 as his did, beneath the love of the soul, in 
 a sort of dull slumber, until a something, 
 or a nothing, happens to arouse it : a touch 
 of the hand, a dangerous thought, a half- 
 formed hope. 
 
 And so they came to love each other 
 with a tenderness that was as pure and holy 
 on the one side as on the other. She, un- 
 taught and ignorant in matters of the heart 
 and reading her Bible each night before 
 retiring ; doomed yet for a few pale springs
 
 190 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 like this to waste to no purpose her bright 
 young grace and beauty, then to grow old, 
 and fade and wither in the unvarying 
 dreary monotony of those same streets, 
 imprisoned between those unchanging walls. 
 He, so young, yet already surfeited with 
 kisses and caresses; for dwelling place 
 having the wide world before him where 
 to choose ; liable to be called away at any 
 moment, to-morrow, perhaps, never to re- 
 turn, and to leave his bones in distant seas.
 
 APEIL had passed and May was coming 
 in, veiled like its predecessor in fog and 
 mist, sombre and sunless, with heavy 
 winds from the sea and unseasonable 
 storms. The lonely quarter where the 
 lovers held their trysts was redolent of the 
 perfume of the linden blossoms, ready to 
 fall and die. 
 
 They were old friends now, of six weeks' 
 standing. Grown bold by reason of never 
 seeing anyone pass that way, they held long 
 confabs under the lindens, and he, because 
 he thought the uniform became him, ven- 
 tured to appear in sailor attire. As the 
 twilight lengthened so did their interviews. 
 
 But it was no more than was to be ex- 
 pected that prying eyes and ears, of which 
 they were blissfully ignorant, should long 
 
 191
 
 192 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 since have detected their secret. At the 
 dressmaker's shop the other girls would 
 look at Madeleine and smile significantly, 
 and if her parents had not yet been in- 
 formed of what was going on it was greatly 
 to be wondered at, for all the neighbors 
 knew. 
 
 One evening Jean, who, as was his inva- 
 riable custom, had been the first to reach 
 their meeting place, perceived a man, whose 
 light hair was beginning to be touched here 
 and there with silver, tramping up and 
 down the sidewalk in an expectant sort of 
 way, who, after a moment's hesitation, came 
 forward with an evident intention of ad- 
 dressing him. He was erect and martial in 
 bearing, and his blue cloth frock, buttoned 
 to the chin, was of the regulation naval 
 cut; manifestly some retired petty officer, 
 who had converted his old uniform coat 
 into civilian attire by cutting off the brass 
 buttons. Jean had a vague recollection of 
 the face for* having seen it one Sunday in 
 the courtyard of the station. But in any
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 193 
 
 event, he would have recognized the frown- 
 ing brows and long, reddish-brown eyes, 
 set as in a cavern under the beetling pro- 
 jection of the forehead, that the old mariner 
 had transmitted to his daughter, with some- 
 thing, it may be, of his character and tem- 
 perament. They looked each other squarely 
 in the face, each understanding in an in- 
 stant who the other was. 
 
 " Ah, it is you ! " said the man in an 
 unpleasant, gruff voice from between his 
 tight-shut teeth. 
 
 Jean's only answer was to raise his hand 
 to his cap in salute ; he was disarmed, 
 because he was her father and had eyes 
 like hers, and his feeling toward him was 
 almost one of filial submission. 
 
 " Be oft' with you ! " the man continued, 
 with the same gruff, dictatorial manner, as 
 if he were on shipboard giving orders to 
 his men, but also with a certain indescrib- 
 able softness that rose suddenly to his eyes, 
 " take yourself off ! It is I who will see 
 her home this evening."
 
 194 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 And Jean took himself off, having first 
 doffed his cap and saluted respectfully. 
 There had been no spark of hatred elicited 
 from the meeting of their glances, from the 
 clash of their conflicting wills.
 
 XXXVII 
 
 THE next day all the quartermasters of 
 the reserves were notified by a sergeant at 
 arms that their presence was required at 
 the office of the commander of the yard. 
 
 All the men had a pretty shrewd idea 
 of what was in the wind : one of them was 
 wanted to go as a volunteer to the extreme 
 East, and there serve for a year or two on 
 board a small gunboat on one of the stag- 
 nant, sluggish rivers of that inhospitable 
 country, where the climate is almost certain 
 death. 
 
 Anxious considerations pressed on Jean's 
 miud. There could be nothing better than 
 this expedition to serve his plans : he might 
 go out there and complete his term of 
 enlistment, saving up his pay meanwhile to 
 enable him to spend a year at Brest after- 
 ward and study for his master's examiu- 
 
 195
 
 196 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 atioD. He said to himself that it was his 
 duty to go. 
 
 But at that juncture Madeleine's pale face 
 rose before his mental vision, causing him 
 such a feeling of deep distress that he 
 paused, recoiling at the thought of taking 
 such a grave and decisive step, waiting, and 
 hoping that someone else would speak. 
 
 Everyone was silent. A silence of diffi- 
 dence, dashed with the sense of the danger 
 there was in the enterprise. In addition 
 to which it may be said that sailors never 
 respond when applied to indirectly and in 
 a body. 
 
 " I will go, Captain," he finally said, 
 tremblingly and in a very low voice. 
 
 " You, Berny, do you want it ? " replied 
 the officer. " All right ; unless the admiral 
 orders otherwise, you may consider your- 
 self booked for the China seas." He called 
 him back to add these words, more terrible 
 than all the rest : " As resrards the custom- 
 
 O 
 
 aiy leave of absence, you see, I believe I 
 am afraid that " and his tone and man-
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 197 
 
 ner intimated plainly enough : you will 
 Lave to do as best you can without it. 
 "The request for the detail was marked 
 urgent, and if I am not mistaken you will 
 start with the detachment for Toulon early 
 to-morrow morning." 
 
 He could feel the violent thumping of 
 his heart, and the blood surged through his 
 veins, causing his ears to ring. He was on 
 the point of saying : " Oh, no ; not that ! 
 Try to obtain another man ; I take back 
 my word," but dared not. In the first 
 place, it was so manifestly his duty to go ; 
 and then there was the fatalism that, 
 unknown to himself, lurked in his being 
 and made him bow to the least sign from 
 Destiny ; and finally, by a peculiarity that 
 is possessed by sailors generally, he always 
 felt his lips close with an invincible, mute 
 reserve in presence of his chiefs when they 
 were strangers to him. All he did was to 
 turn on the officer his eyes, dilated with 
 sudden anguish, reply, " Very well, Cap- 
 tain ! " and leave the room with the air of
 
 198 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 a man who has been struck on the head 
 with a club. 
 
 He was granted no leave of absence. 
 This is a favor that is almost always ex- 
 tended to seamen who are ordered away on 
 distant service, longer or shorter, as the 
 case may be, according to the nature of the 
 assignment; but in cases of urgency the 
 leave may be withheld. 
 
 He was consigned to barracks that same 
 evening, where he made up his kit and 
 adjusted his accounts, and where he was to 
 remain with the eight other men of the 
 detail until the time came for their depart- 
 ure. They assembled in the dim twilight, 
 under the archway of the courtyard, calling 
 one another by name, curiously studying 
 one another's face, those nine men who had 
 been so suddenly caught in company at 
 one cast of the net; who were to be co-part- 
 ners in exile out there in that strange laud, 
 so far from home, and share the same dan- 
 gers and fatigues. No leave was granted, 
 no opportunity to say good-by to wives and
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 199 
 
 parents ; that was the thing that seemed to 
 them hardest of all to bear. Nevertheless, 
 two or three were singing, but one, a young 
 man, was weeping bitterly. 
 
 His mother ! A feeling of deepest ten- 
 derness filled Jean's heart as he thought of 
 her ; it was source of bitterest grief that he 
 was unable to embrace her ; but it was for 
 her sake that he was going away, for their 
 future, the joint future of them both. This 
 distant service for which he had volunteered 
 was to be in some sort the expiatory act of 
 his life. Then, his conscience easy on that 
 score, he sat down and wrote her a long, 
 affectionate letter, that did much to tran- 
 quillize his feelings. 
 
 And Madeleine ! That he should be torn 
 from her thus, should be given no oppor- 
 tunity to speak to her, to send her a line by 
 messenger, even to see her dear face once 
 
 O * 
 
 more ! Should he write to her ? But 
 what could he write ; ask her to marry 
 him ? His heart counseled him to the step, 
 although she was but a poor little sewing
 
 200 JEAN SERNY, SAILOR 
 
 girl ; but then by such a marriage he would 
 be condemning himself to remain a sailor 
 all his life ; above all, he would dash to the 
 ground his mother's cherished hopes, whose 
 dream, had ever been that later on, when 
 he should be master of a vessel, lie would 
 restore their shattered fortunes by taking 
 to wife some pretty young heiress of Pro- 
 vence. What was he to do, then, since 
 that door was closed to him, since her 
 father stood between them and he would 
 have to face down all social prejudices and 
 conventionalities, against which, however, 
 all his being revolted, this evening, in the 
 overmastering love that filled his heart ? 
 
 He seated himself at his table to write a 
 letter of farewell to Madeleine ; he com- 
 menced two, which he immediately de- 
 stroyed. To whom could he intrust a 
 letter, moreover, so that she would be cer- 
 tain to receive it ? Would she be allowed 
 to receive a communication from him in 
 the house of her parents ? And to think 
 that she was so near, perhaps at that very
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 201 
 
 moment returning to her home along the 
 familiar ways, alone, distracted, straining 
 her eyes to catch a glimpse of him whom 
 she was never to see more. 
 
 The end of it was that, at a late hour of 
 the evening, he determined it would be best 
 to wait and write her a good long letter 
 from Port Said, or some other point among 
 the first stops they made, at which her 
 father could not take offense ; a letter 
 bearing a foreign postmark would be more 
 likely to be received, because the distant 
 writer was less an object of dread, and it 
 might well be that they would see no more 
 of him. 
 
 That he did not write, or that he put oft' 
 doing so until a more remote period, was 
 attributable also, in no small degree, to that 
 mental inertia, to that habit of waiting on 
 fatality, which was so important an element 
 in his temperament in connection with 
 his subsequent stubbornness in adhering to 
 the decisions, wise or foolish, as might be, 
 at which he afterward arrived. And yet
 
 202 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 the remorse and distress he experienced 
 were great as was his love; he had 
 never known a passion to possess him thus 
 entirely. 
 
 The next morning beheld him once 
 again in the railway station where he had 
 first seen Madeleine. In company Avith his 
 new comrades he took the train for Toulon, 
 thence to start forth on one of those expe- 
 ditions full of uncertainty and danger, the 
 prospect of which made the shrill scream of 
 the locomotive ring in his ears with a 
 strangely boding sound. And as the wheels 
 began to revolve he turned his eyes upon 
 the window, with a sensation of infinite 
 sadness and desolation, for a last look at 
 the little walled town which he had entered 
 a short four months ago with such light- 
 hearted indifference.
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 ACROSS the Indian Ocean the good ship 
 Circe was plowing her way merrily among 
 the waves, rocked gently by the tranquil 
 summer sea, her white sails glinting in 
 the glowing light, hanging like a speck 
 between the upper and nether expanses of 
 deep blue infinity, and leaving behind her 
 her ever-lengthening trail of snowy foam 
 that flashed and sparkled in the sunlight. 
 
 Port Said had been left behind some 
 days before, and -Aden also, and Jean's 
 letter to Madeleine still remained un- 
 written. When, knowing himself as he 
 did, he made the mental admission that 
 there was a probability of this adventure 
 ending as the other one had done, the 
 adventure at Quebec with the golden- 
 haired, laughing Canadian girl, he experi- 
 
 203
 
 204 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 enced a feeling of serious dissatisfaction 
 with himself, and more particularly when 
 he remembered how confiding she had 
 shown herself so confiding and so poor. 
 At the recollection of her graceful and 
 touching confession of poverty, at the 
 recollection even of certain details of her 
 attire, the poor cheap dresses that she pro- 
 tected so tenderly against the rain, her 
 little gloves darned and mended with such 
 careful pains, he felt himself overcome by 
 one of those infinitely tender sensations of 
 pity that constitute one of the manifesta- 
 tions of a deep, pure love, and he made a 
 vow to himself that he would write to her 
 as soon as he reached his destination. But 
 then it w T as such a troublesome letter to 
 write, since he had not yet made up his 
 mind to marry her ! 
 
 There were moments also when he was 
 oblivious of everything, thanks to the 
 mirth and merriment of his comrades, and 
 to the entrancing grandeur of the spectacle 
 that surrounded them on every side.
 
 JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 205 
 
 The Circe was to delay her voyage long 
 enough to set him ashore at the mouth of 
 the Red River, together with the other 
 seamen who were intended to fill up the 
 complement of the Estoc. This latter was 
 a corvette, an old-fashioned sailing vessel 
 with a great spread of canvas ; grown old 
 in the service, and weary after many years 
 of cruising, she was now going out on 
 station in the China seas, which was to be 
 the last act in her career. 
 
 As it chanced, several of the old crew of 
 the Resolue had been drafted on board, 
 and Jean thus found himself again sailing 
 in company with Le Marec and Joal, his 
 two former chums and messmates, as well 
 as with several others whom he knew, and 
 the ties of old acquaintance were drawn 
 taut once more. 
 
 Le Marec, who had attained the dignity 
 of second-malt I- e, had been carried off his 
 feet by a sudden gust of passion eight or 
 ten days before they sailed and taken to 
 himself a wife. He was become extremely
 
 206 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 saving, and had in view one single object, 
 which was to serve his time out and go 
 with his wife and live somewhere in the 
 neighborhood of Brieuc, in a house that 
 should have a garden attached to it. He 
 was already grave and severe of aspect; 
 wind andx water, moreover, had conspired 
 to impart a deep hue of purple to his 
 countenance, which at times appeared 
 fierce. There were a few white hairs 
 beginning to show about his temples, and 
 his one-and-thirty years, together with his 
 extraordinary breadth of beam, made him 
 consider himself entitled to assume a 
 paternal air toward his comrades. 
 
 Joal was in the mousgueterie, and was a 
 good type of the helot of the service, his 
 mind equally void of ambition or aspira- 
 tions ; his limited understanding had sub- 
 mitted cheerfully to receive the yoke of 
 discipline. All of life for him was summed 
 up in the strict observance of his daily 
 duties : at such a time of the day he was 
 to scour a certain portion of the deck with
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 207 
 
 sand, at such another time he was to polish 
 certain brass- or iron-work with tripoli, and 
 he was never to permit himself to ques- 
 tion the propriety or impropriety of these 
 actions. Outside this sphere he was an 
 excellent fellow, and his friends were sure 
 of his affection and devotion at all times, 
 and of his tender sympathy in misfortune. 
 The other members of Jean's mess 
 were sufficiently agreeable, simple-minded 
 youths, who spent much of their time in 
 laughing and joking, and were pretty good 
 at castle-building also, when they had time 
 for it, although they did not know the 
 name of this latter silent pastime. And at 
 the pleasant evening hour devoted to spin- 
 ning yarns and singing songs on the fore- 
 castle, they would collect in little social, 
 compact groups, then would lie down on 
 the scrupulously clean deck and go to sleep 
 in the white moonlight or under the blaz- 
 ing southern stars. 
 
 O 
 
 During the voyage Jean was disturbed 
 in the profounder and more mysterious
 
 208 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 recesses of his soul by a multitude of 
 tilings that his comrades saw, but in a 
 much more confused and unintelligent way 
 and with infinitely less depth of feeling: 
 the sands and mirages of the Ked Sea, and 
 its blood-red sun, setting each evening 
 in terrible, Apocalyptic splendor; Sinai, 
 which they beheld in the distance, glowing 
 like a seven-fold heated furnace, against a 
 sky of molten gold ; the ancient pastures 
 of the Arabs, there, close on the port 
 bow all so familiar to him ! And before 
 him lay the great, the disquieting attrac- 
 tion, the enigma of that land of the Orient 
 that he had never seen.
 
 XXXIX 
 
 THE good ship dropped her anchor at 
 last in her haven at the ends of the earth. 
 He had reached his journey's end. 
 
 He beheld before him, in reality, not in 
 a dream, the little gunboat that had been 
 in his thoughts so much of late. She was 
 
 O 
 
 resting tranquilly on the bosom of the dull- 
 hued, sluggish river, made fast to the bank 
 among the tall reeds, in an atmosphere so 
 stifliiir that the slightest movement brought 
 
 O O O 
 
 the perspiration out in great drops upon 
 the forehead. Estoc, he read in large, plain 
 letters on her black stern, the name that 
 had haunted him all through his voyage 
 with a sensation as if it were ominous of 
 evil. 
 
 This was her anchorage, and conse- 
 quently this little nook of earth was to 
 be Jean's residence for the next eighteen 
 
 209
 
 210 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 months. The Estops new men had been 
 brought to the spot at evening, at that 
 brief, enchanting moment that succeeds the 
 debilitating heat of the day and precedes 
 the coming of the night. Extending along 
 the bank of the river, the water of which 
 somehow failed to convey to the eye the 
 usual impression of grateful coolness, was 
 a village among the trees, or, to speak more 
 correctly, a road cut through the dense veg- 
 etation and bordered with little portals 
 that conducted to dwellings buried in 
 masses of verdure ; a little way beyond 
 this the road made a bend, and the pros- 
 pect ended in the shadows of a gloomy 
 forest. Imprisoned aboard their ship dur- 
 ing their long voyage, with nothing to in- 
 terest them save the view of sky and sea 
 that they obtained from the deck, the men 
 were unprepared for the strangeness of the 
 exotic scene. All their senses were vividly 
 impressed, and Jean almost forgot to 
 breathe. Their lungs, too, seemed to ex- 
 pand and contract more laboriously, as in
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 211 
 
 an overheated vapor bath, permeated by 
 niusky odors. 
 
 The soil was of a bright red, the vegeta- 
 tion on every hand of an intense metallic 
 green, and the vividness of these hues was 
 such that the only object with which they 
 could be compared was the crude, fantastic 
 coloring of a Chinese picture book ; even 
 in the twilight the colors stood out in high 
 relief against the increasing darkness; it 
 seemed as if the red of the soil and the 
 green of the trees must continue to be visi- 
 ble even in the obscurity of night by their 
 excess of brilliancy. The little portals 
 that led to the hidden habitations were all 
 preposterously fantastic in design, with a 
 vague attempt to imitate animal forms in 
 their ornamentation ; they seemed to 
 shrink and endeavor to conceal themselves, 
 as if ill at ease, under that perennial 
 and depressing vegetation that dwarfed 
 mankind and was victorious over every- 
 thing. The men and women to whom this 
 
 O 
 
 scene was the setting of their daily life-
 
 212 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 drama came and went, attending to their 
 strange little occupations ; they had small 
 furtive eyes, turned upward obliquely at 
 the cornel's ; their yellow skin had bor- 
 rowed a tinge of red from the red soil ; 
 they walked with a catlike, noiseless tread, 
 either bare of feet or shod with paper san- 
 dals. The aspect of the domestic animals, 
 lazily ruminating by the fences, of the birds 
 nestling in the tree tops, of the most tiny 
 flower that grew by the roadside, told the 
 new-cornel's what life was to be for- them 
 in that remote hostile land that fate had 
 assigned them for their abode. 
 
 And this little world, living its life in 
 death among the trees, a race apart from 
 all mankind, did not appear so much sur- 
 prised that it was thus as that it was possi- 
 ble there should be worlds unlike it. The 
 saffron-hued natives, whose bodies exhaled 
 a mingled odor of musk and sweat, passed 
 the sailors without condescending to turn 
 their heads, giving them, as they went by, 
 a vaguely supercilious smile, which the blue
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 213 
 
 jackets returned ; the feeling on each side 
 was that they were and would be always 
 strangers to one another. To the younger 
 of the females alone did the sailors pay any 
 attention with some show of gravity, for in 
 the human race the senses do not pause 
 before the barriers that separate races. 
 
 Upon the whole it was an impression of 
 mocking irony, but more still of something 
 sinister and terrible, that the men derived 
 from their reception in this quarter of the 
 globe, that had been for centuries forming 
 and modeling its frail, yellow denizens, 
 with their catlike smile and tread, and 
 that was conscious of its power still to go 
 on annihilating, with its miasms and its 
 torpidity, the race of white men in untold 
 numbers.
 
 XL 
 
 FOE nearly a year now Jean had been 
 living in that strange land. His cheeks 
 had taken on a yellow hue, like those of 
 the small feline beings, his neighbors, and 
 his muscular force had wasted greatly. 
 
 He had tried to work during his unem- 
 ployed moments on board the Estoc, but 
 the incessant humid, oppressive heat, which 
 continued uninterruptedly by night as well 
 as by day, produced a peculiarly debilitat- 
 ing fatigue, not only of the body but of 
 the mind, and he would remain seated 
 before his diagrams and figures for hours 
 at a time, incapable of applying himself, 
 with a sensation in his brain of utter void 
 and emptiness. And the poor little note 
 books, reminders of his college days, that 
 were constantly becoming less and less ser- 
 viceable to him, filled as they were with 
 
 214
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 215 
 
 matter the sense of which eluded his 
 apprehension, had begun to assume an 
 aspect of great antiquity, owing to the 
 inroads of mold, to the attacks of the 
 white ants and the legion of infinitesimally 
 small creatures that are endowed with 
 means of destruction a thousand, times 
 swifter and more powerful in that land of 
 death. 
 
 But an act of highest import in his 
 existence had been accomplished finally : 
 it was written and dispatched, that letter 
 to Madeleine, that for so long a time had 
 been the torturing anxiety of his waking 
 moments. Little by little the girl's pretty 
 face had come to occupy, almost to the 
 exclusion of all else, his thoughts, now 
 dulled and stupefied by the noxious influ- 
 ences of the atmosphere. Owing to the 
 effect produced on him by solitude and 
 nostalgia, he had come to live in such con- 
 stant, persistent dreams of France, and 
 France with her, that he had thrown all 
 his objections to the winds and made up
 
 216 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 his mind to do the one thing it was possi- 
 ble for him to do : marry her. 
 
 That the step would have an injurious 
 effect upon his future there could be no 
 doubt ; it would place difficulties in the 
 way of that return to Antibes, which, not- 
 withstanding his want of steadiness and 
 persistency in carrying out his plan, still 
 continued to be his great object in life. 
 But, once she was down there in Provence, 
 who would ever suspect, beholding her 
 walking at his side, so pretty, so graceful, 
 with such charming and distinguished 
 manners, that she had ever been a working- 
 girl, earning her living with her needle ? 
 
 A consideration that had been afflicting 
 him for some time was that this return, 
 this ineffably blissful dream of revisiting 
 Antibes in company with Madeleine and 
 his mother, appeared to him as a distant 
 probability, which, instead of coming 
 nearer, was constantly receding ; of a truth, 
 the realization of his dream seemed to be 
 becoming more and more problematical ;
 
 JEAN BEEFY, SAILOR 217 
 
 it appeared as if it were doomed to die a 
 lingering death beneath all that unfriendly 
 verdure, in that air overloaded with per- 
 fumes, under that incessant warm rain. 
 And one day he suddenly felt himself 
 assailed by a sharp pang of anguish the 
 same anguish that he had already before 
 experienced, of exile and anaemia, only 
 aggravated at the thought that Madeleine 
 was nineteen years old, and that believing, 
 as she had doubtless believed for the last 
 ten or twelve months, that he had deserted 
 her, she might well have bestowed her 
 affections on another. And then presto ! 
 he had jumped at the decision that had 
 been resting in his mind half -formed since 
 he left France with feverish anxiety to 
 catch the mail on the steamer that was 
 soon to pass, he had sat down and written 
 to his mother and to Madeleine's father. 
 
 He begged his mother to put herself 
 immediately in communication with, the 
 parents, and request in form for him the 
 hand of the object of his love.
 
 XLI 
 
 AND her boy's letter was so prettily 
 affectionate, so irresistibly appealing, that she 
 had made haste to comply with his request 
 and write, notwithstanding the feeling of 
 terror that she experienced at thought of 
 that low-born girl arising so unexpectedly 
 between her and him, and entailing the 
 ruin of all their hopes and irreparable dis- 
 grace and loss of caste. 
 
 It is true that the letter which she wrote 
 was couched in such terms as a lady uses, 
 that is, it was such a letter as those to 
 whom it was addressed should consider 
 themselves honored by receiving, but the 
 main point was that in it she formally 
 requested Madeleine's hand for her son, who 
 was expected home in six months' time. 
 After it was dispatched, commencing with 
 the following morning, she watched each 
 
 218
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 219 
 
 day with impatient eagerness for the arrival 
 of the postman, wishing and hoping in her 
 heart of hearts that this Madeleine might 
 be married, or have left the country, or 
 have died, or done anything that might 
 effect a riddance of her.
 
 XLII 
 
 THE following week an answer carne, 
 written on thin, coarse paper, such as poor 
 people use, by the hand of a woman unac- 
 customed to hold the pen the hand of the 
 other mother, evidently ; a curt, diy, scorn- 
 ful answer, comprising only a few lines. 
 
 Madeleine's parents " believed that they 
 remembered something " of that young man 
 who had behaved so disrespectfully toward 
 their daughter. But it was as good as set- 
 tled that she was to marry a paymaster's 
 clerk in the navy ; she herself " didn't see 
 any great objection" to the match, and 
 hence it had not been thought best to 
 inform her of this new offer. And in addi- 
 tion to that, her means would not allow her 
 to marry one no better off than a quarter- 
 master. 
 
 And behold, Jean's mother, instead of 
 220
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 221 
 
 experiencing that sensation of gratification 
 and delight that she had anticipated from 
 a refusal, was not only wounded, but was 
 grieved and saddened to the bottom of her 
 soul ; that her son, her dearly beloved son, 
 should be refused in such terms, when he 
 had made the offering of his life ! 
 
 Brooding over the matter as she did 
 night and day, she at last came to think 
 that she could discern a sort of fatal con- 
 nection in all the evil turns with which 
 destiny so malignantly persisted in afflict- 
 ing her Jean. "Was he really of so little 
 account, her boy, was he fallen so low, that 
 a sewing girl, a daughter of common 
 
 o o / o 
 
 people, should dismiss him thus ? What 
 a fall, my God ! what a fall, after the 
 dreams of other days, the dreams that she 
 and the poor old grandfather, now dead 
 and gone, had dreamed over that little 
 curly head ! 
 
 Upon a second reading of his letter, 
 moreover, she saw that that love of his was 
 deeply rooted in his heart, that he would
 
 222 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 have to suffer profoundly. Should sne 
 write and tell him of his rejection ; should 
 she inflict that suffering on him, away out 
 there in his distant land of exile ? To 
 what purpose, since he was to return so 
 soon ? No, she would not do it ; she would 
 pretend that the letter containing his 
 request had not reached her yet, and when 
 she came to write him by the next mail 
 would fill the envelope, the last that was 
 to bear his address on board the Estoc, 
 with whatever other matter she might 
 think of, but not this. 
 
 And then, too, other anxieties, that she 
 had never known before, presented them- 
 selves to swell the discomfort arising from 
 that indignity: her Jean had had some 
 attacks of the insidious fever of the 
 country ; he had not been able to conceal 
 the fact from her when he was sent to 
 hospital at Hanoi. In the house that she 
 lived in at Brest there were other seamen's 
 families, and not very long before she had 
 witnessed the home -coming, from those
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 223 
 
 colonies, of two little sailor lads, scarcely 
 more than boys, whose letters had not inti- 
 mated that they were seriously ill, but 
 whose frightful looks seemed to indicate 
 that they had not long to live. Never had 
 she felt herself so deserted, so alone with 
 her distress, that a sentiment of supersti- 
 tious terror deterred her from confiding to 
 other women who were mothers. Sombre 
 forebodings, a chilling, icy gloom descended 
 and enwrapped her, like the folds of a 
 funeral pall. Prayer ! the thought of it 
 occurred to her from time to time, indeed, 
 but she could not pray. During her earlier 
 years she had been devout ; her faith had 
 been ardent, impulsive ; somewhat of the 
 Italian nature, somewhat idolatrous, per- 
 haps, but to-day that was all past and 
 ended, not so much from incredulity as 
 from her deep-seated revolt against such an 
 accumulation of disaster and ruined hopes. 
 Between the Virgin who sat aloft in 
 heaven, so calmly indifferent, and herself, 
 so wretched and disconsolate on earth, a
 
 224 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 veil had been drawn, and all her adoration 
 was transferred to her boy. Although she 
 had continually before her eyes the two 
 holy images that she had brought with her 
 from her Provencal home and fastened to 
 the wall of her bedchamber, she prayed no 
 more. She never crossed the threshold of 
 a church, but lived a life of silent suffering 
 and revolt, her every faculty concentrated 
 in the one single persistent, torturing, 
 delicious occupation of waiting.
 
 XLIII 
 
 AND Madeleine, in the little town where 
 doubtless her life will continue to run on 
 monotonously as ever, will Madeleine, once 
 she shall be married to another, quickly 
 forget her friend of other days ? 
 
 Or, who can tell, will she remember? 
 in the fleeting succession of those spring- 
 times that in the end will rob her of her 
 fresh beauty, as she returns to her lowly 
 home in the soft May twilight, along those 
 streets that wear the same unvarying aspect, 
 through that avenue of lindens as ever 
 solitary and deserted, will she remember, 
 will she be haunted by the memory of that 
 Jean whom she once loved, and by his 
 image, reluctant to vanish from her heart ? 
 At the pleasant, tranquil evening hour, in 
 the lengthening shadows of the new vernal 
 
 225
 
 226 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 growths, will she once again behold his 
 shade, leaning against the trunks of those 
 trees that are sempiternally the same, the 
 youthful shade of him she loved ? Who 
 shall say?
 
 XLIV 
 
 AFTER plowing her way for many a time 
 through the hot, muddy water of the river 
 and battling against its rapid currents, the 
 Estoc was once again at her usual anchorage, 
 among the reeds, just off the village in the 
 wood. 
 
 And now the time was come when Jean 
 was to leave that country. On a still, 
 sultry evening, like that evening which 
 eighteen months before had witnessed his 
 arrival a strong and healthy man, he was 
 picking his way with slow and feeble steps 
 toward a carriage that stood waiting, sup- 
 ported by a brother sailor, turning his 
 pallid face in the direction of the gunboat 
 to bid farewell with nod and smile to those 
 who were to remain. 
 
 Everything reminded him of the evening 
 of his landing ; the crepuscular moment 
 
 227
 
 228 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 was the same, there was the same amazing 
 brilliancy of red soil and lustrous foliage, 
 the same odors, the same yellow natives, 
 who, before vanishing within their huts 
 beneath the trees, turned for the last time 
 their little enigmatic, oblique eyes on him 
 who was departing. In the odorous, humid 
 atmosphere, beneath the great oppressive 
 trees, life was ever the same, warm and 
 languid, entirely different from ours. And 
 all those objects that beheld Jean's depart- 
 ure seemed conscious that once more they 
 had infused their poison into the system of 
 someone from France. 
 
 Of late days, in addition to the stubborn 
 fever, that returned with inexorable regu- 
 larity at stated intervals, dysentery had 
 set in and at once assumed its gravest 
 aspect. This is a disease whose course can 
 never be predicted with any certainty; 
 sometimes it selects the strong for its vic- 
 tims and passes by the feeble, and again 
 the converse is the case ; sometimes it fin- 
 ishes its murderous work in a few weeks,
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 229 
 
 sometimes in many years. Some return to 
 France who, to all appearances, have es- 
 caped scot free, but the insidious malady 
 is all the time gnawing at their vitals, and 
 at the end of ten years, or it may be twenty, 
 makes an end of them ; while others, with 
 far less power of resistance, on whom the 
 disease seems to have taken a much stronger 
 hold, recover, no one can tell why. 
 
 Two of the young men who sailed from 
 France with Jean had died before the first 
 year was ended. He was leaving the 
 country a veiy sick man, his features drawn 
 and pinched, the skin of his face like 
 parchment ; the slightest effort, even the 
 attempt to walk a few steps, would bring 
 the perspiration in streams from his limbs 
 and body. 
 
 And occasionally, at his moments of 
 awakening, he had the impression which 
 did not remain long with him, it is true- 
 that his return had been too long delayed.
 
 XLV 
 
 AT Saigon they found a number of 
 soldiers and sailors of the local station who 
 had completed their time and were await- 
 ing an opportunity of returning to their 
 native land, and, in addition, the entire 
 ship's company of the Circe, that had had 
 her armament removed and was to be 
 anchored permanently in the stream. 
 Through motives of economy all these 
 people were crowded on board the Saom, 
 an old-time sailing vessel altered to a 
 steamer, that was to return to France by 
 the longer way around the Cape of Good 
 Hope. 
 
 That he might be spared the passage of 
 the Red Sea, with its terrible debilitating 
 heat, Jean had asked and obtained permis- 
 sion to sail on board the Sddne, where he 
 would also have the benefit of the company 
 
 230
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 231 
 
 of Le Marec, Joal, Kerbhoulis, all his old 
 friends and messmates of the Resolue and 
 the Circe. 
 
 These men, too, had suffered to some 
 extent from the same complaint as Jean, 
 but far less. than he, and there was now 
 scarcely a trace of it left on them. This was 
 accounted for by the fact that for the last 
 eighteen months they had been serving at 
 sea, while he, whose duties confined him to 
 the streams and swamps of the interior, 
 had been constantly compelled to inhale 
 the poisonous exhalations of the rank vege- 
 tation.
 
 XL VI 
 
 THE sea air was at first beneficial, and 
 hope returned to him. As long as they 
 continued to have the trade winds of the 
 northern hemisphere with them he could 
 remain on deck, seated in the shade, inhal- 
 ing deep draughts of the rejuvenating 
 breeze, watching the handling of the ship 
 and chatting with his friends. 
 
 O 
 
 But not many days elapsed before they 
 entered the equatorial regions, with their 
 oppressive calms, enervating humidity and 
 drenching rains. Then, notwithstanding 
 all the tender care of which he was the 
 object, there ensued a sudden prostration 
 which obliged him to take to his cot and 
 remain below in the ship's hospital. 
 
 In the beginning his feeling was that of 
 the mingled stupefaction and incredulity 
 
 232
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 233 
 
 which is experienced by the very young 
 and very strong, who always refuse to ad- 
 mit in their own case the possibility of the 
 malady terminating fatally. While at his 
 post on board the Estoc it had seemed to 
 him that, once he was out of that Chinese 
 sweat-box, a few whiffs of bracing sea air 
 and the pleasant thought of being home- 
 ward bound would suffice to make him a 
 well man. Could it really be that his 
 return had been too long delayed ! 
 
 Mon Dieu, how sluggishly they crept 
 along, how persistently those everlasting 
 calms held on ! Would the breeze never 
 spring up, would they never light the fur- 
 nace fires and start the engines ! 
 
 And on waking one day in the afternoon, 
 heavier of head and more anguished at 
 heart than usual, from an unrefreshing 
 slumber, the truth presented itself to him 
 in all its appalling nakedness ; he saw how 
 it was with him, and with the knowledge 
 came a spasm of horror and dismay, as if 
 before him he had beheld a fathomless
 
 234 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 abyss of night and blackness into which he 
 was on the point of falling 
 
 His old comrades of the Resolue often 
 came and sat by his bedside, especially Le 
 Marec and Joal, who devoted to him every 
 moment that they could snatch from their 
 duties. He loved them both tenderly, he 
 thanked them, and would sometimes display 
 an interest in their attempts to cheer him ; 
 and it seemed to him that they brought with 
 them in their coarse garments a wholesome 
 breath of the fresh air above. But how 
 little did ties like these count for as the 
 great end drew near ! Ah, no ; it was the 
 mother in whom all love and affection 
 centred, who was all in all to him ; his 
 mother, upon whom he was ever calling 
 from the depths of his soul, and for whom 
 he yearned despairingly. 
 
 And still no sign of a breeze ! Still the 
 dead calm and the stifling hot, damp 
 atmosphere in which his strength was 
 wasting, wasting, as in a Turkish bath too
 
 JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 235 
 
 long protracted. And at his side were 
 other patients, gradually sinking, little 
 soldiers, mere boys not over twenty, con- 
 sumed with dysentery, with ashen faces 
 and frames of skeletons. And to these 
 sick men it seemed as if their torment was 
 to be protracted to infinity, rocking thus 
 idly on the broad bosom of the ocean, ad- 
 vancing no step toward home.
 
 XLVII 
 
 the tenth day, however, in the early 
 morning hours, this stagnant condition of 
 affairs commenced to end. 
 
 A breeze sprang up, so faint at first as 
 barely to be perceptible, but freshening con- 
 stantly, and before it, in a sky less like a 
 brazier, more like our own, a bevy of small 
 fleecy, pearl-tinted clouds scudded merrily. 
 It was warm, this breeze, but possessed 
 such invigorating qualities that it seemed 
 cool; through the long wind sails, whose 
 mouths yawned to receive it, it swept down- 
 ward even to the depths of the ship's hold, 
 to the sick bay filled with feverish emana- 
 tions, where the patients received it with a 
 sensation of delicious comfort and well- 
 being. It was the southern trade wind, and 
 the sky was the unvarying sky of the 
 tropics ; the Saone had entered those regions 
 
 236
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 237 
 
 that know no change, and henceforth the 
 same unfailing wind would urge her on- 
 ward, night and day, toward the Cape. 
 
 Stretched on his cot away at the bottom 
 of the ship, Jean was conscious of all that 
 was happening above in the air and sun- 
 shine. The boatswain's silver whistle, that 
 had been silent all through those long, 
 oppressive days, now piped its cheeriest 
 strains, and the sick man's ear, more alert in 
 inactivity, caught the ringing sounds, now 
 short and sharp, again drawn out in linger- 
 ing accents, or modulated in birdlike trills 
 and quavers ; he seized the meaning of each 
 different signal as easily as he would have 
 read a book writ in a familiar language ; 
 he divined all that was going on aloft upon 
 the great masts and yards, and could have 
 told the name of each separate bit of can- 
 vas as it was set to catch the favoring gale. 
 Their speed increased with every hour, and 
 everything and everybody seemed pervaded 
 by a sense of lightness ; even the water of 
 the sea seemed lighter, that water that is
 
 238 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 oftentimes so dense and heavy when the 
 wind is adverse and there is a head sea on ; 
 to-day, ship, wind and sea were all running 
 in the same direction, and now, instead of 
 the great ugly waves that had often dashed 
 like a battering ram against the frail walls 
 of the sick bay, all that Jean heard was 
 the ripple of the glancing water, the plash 
 of the flying spray. Besides the positive 
 physical comfort that this beneficent wind 
 brought to those poor exhausted invalids, 
 it also inspired them with hope, and as the. 
 Saone threw out sail upon sail to the breeze 
 Jean's eyes, dreamily fixed on visions of 
 distant France, recovered almost completely 
 the expression of life that they had lost. 
 Oh, how good it was to be speeding on- 
 ward thus ! Oh, let them hasten, quick, 
 quick ! let them fly like a bird across 
 that wateiy waste, whose terrible immen- 
 sity was keeping him from his mother. If 
 but the numbered tale of his days could be 
 prolonged a little ; if he could but live six 
 or seven weeks more in that friendlier air
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 239 
 
 that was already restoring to him his 
 strength ! mon Dieu, one can never tell, 
 with these strange complaints, that often 
 last longer than one thinks. Only six or 
 seven weeks more, and they would be at 
 their voyage's end ! And it came to appear 
 to him more and more a possibility, almost 
 a certainty, indeed, that he was again to 
 behold their poor abode at Brest, that he 
 loved now with all his heart, and to clasp 
 his mother in his arms, and have her at his 
 bedside to hold his hands in hers at the 
 last, dread hour. 
 
 As evening was descending, at that 
 pleasant moment succeeding the setting of 
 the sun, an irresistible impulse seized him ; 
 he felt better, ever so much better, and so 
 from his sick-bed he arose to go and mingle 
 with the living who were up there on deck, 
 breathing the pure, cool air ; having bathed 
 his face in cold water and put on a clean 
 suit of duck, he started on his upward 
 journey, dragging himself laboriously up
 
 240 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 the long ladders, like a phantom in the 
 semi-darkness. His great strength, that 
 had been his sole terrestrial possession, had 
 deserted him ; still, in the stout topman's 
 arms, where the muscles had stood out in 
 great knots and bunches once, there was 
 a remnant of pith that disease had not 
 destroyed entirely, and he used it to hoist 
 himself up, hanging on grimly to each 
 round of the ladder, while his legs, first to 
 give out, weakened under the weight of 
 his body. 
 
 At last his head emerged into the open 
 air. As if arising from the tomb he gazed 
 around him, feasting his charmed eyes with 
 the view of surrounding space, the belly- 
 ing sails, the deep sky in which the stars 
 were beginning to appear. 
 
 The Saone was flying like some great 
 white-winged bird of night before the 
 austral trade wind. The good ship, speed- 
 ing onward and restoring vanished hopes ! 
 And as Jean raised his head alcove the 
 companionway, the first breath of welcome
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 241 
 
 air that reached him also brought to his 
 ears a joyful and familiar sound: a song 
 that, barely audible below, up there seemed 
 suddenly to swell and burst in triumphant 
 salutation of his re-appearance among his 
 brother sailors. It was, as ever, the inevi- 
 table "Old Neptune," the same old light, 
 catchy chorus that had been sung over and 
 over again at the same evening hour. And 
 the Sa-one went pressing onward into the 
 infinite solitude of silence, that was scarcely 
 disturbed by the gentle ripple of the water 
 beneath her bow, scattering upon the still- 
 ness of the night the joyous sounds, leaving 
 behind her a trailing wake of melody, that 
 was lost and wasted for that there was no 
 ear to hear it. 
 
 When Jean's eyes, long unaccustomed to 
 the spectacle, had renewed acquaintance 
 with the immensity of sea and sky, they 
 turned to the towering edifice of canvas 
 that, spread to catch every breath of wind, 
 was urging the vessel onward upon her 
 course: a tall, fantastic structure, snow-
 
 242 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 white against the diaphanous blue of night, 
 that seemed to fill the whole expanse of 
 air and pierce the heavens with its unstable 
 fabric, unreal and unsubstantial as a vision. 
 White, too, were the singers in their linen 
 garments ; some stretched on the white 
 planks in every attitude of repose and 
 well-being, others grouped in form of pyra- 
 mid on the ship's boats that occupied the 
 central portion of the deck, and others 
 still, higher and more distant, clustered on 
 the bridge. " Old Neptune, Monarch of 
 the Seas," sang the choristers, motionlessly 
 reclining in the starry splendor of the 
 night. The sprightly refrain of the song 
 returned incessantly, taken up nonchal- 
 antly, as in a semi-slumberous state, by 
 fresh young vibrating voices, so modulated 
 as not to dissipate a pleasant dream. And 
 all this edifice of white sails and men in 
 white pressed onward, careening and bow- 
 ing gently to the breeze, like some fantas- 
 tic thing soon to be swallowed up in dark- 
 ness; pressed onward ever, quicker and
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 243 
 
 more quickly still, racing, flying through 
 the transparent night, with soothing, softly 
 swaying motion, and occasionally a little 
 bump, like a universally pervasive thrill 
 of joy. 
 
 The poor fugitive from below decks, 
 upon whom Death had already laid his 
 finger, wondered at this display of fairy- 
 land, so long unseen by him as almost to 
 be forgotten. All that made a sailor's life 
 so entrancing to him, all that he loved so 
 in his profession, was on this last, supreme 
 occasion displayed with the utmost of 
 spectacular effect before his eyes, that soon 
 would see no more. Charmed and dazzled, 
 with an ardent longing that he might live 
 as long as they, the young comrades who 
 surrounded him, he came forward, very 
 weak, his strength all gone, with a dizzi- 
 ness that became more pronounced at each 
 succeeding moment, seeking among all those 
 white forms the friendly group where Marec 
 and Joal were, that he might once again, as 
 of old, take his place among them.
 
 244 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 They were there, close at hand, and 
 because they had recognized him they 
 hushed their song ; they looked upon his 
 face, where a brief time had wrought such 
 a startling change, where the pallor and 
 emaciation were even more strongly 
 marked in the dim vague light of even- 
 ing. 
 
 " Oh, it is you, my boy ! " said Marec 
 one of those elderly personages who play 
 the part of heavy father on shipboard, who 
 assume patronizing airs by reason of their 
 massive squareness of build and sun-burnt 
 faces, and whose age may range anywhere 
 between thirty and thirty-five. 
 
 " Make room there, you fellows ; make 
 room for Berny." 
 
 Around him silence reigned while his 
 friends were arranging a little nook where 
 he might be comfortable, but a few steps 
 away the chorus went on uninterruptedly, 
 with unabated spirit and the same careless, 
 insouciant swing. A piece of sailcloth was 
 brought and folded twice across as a pro-
 
 \ 
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 245 
 
 tection for Iris wasted limbs against the 
 hard planks, and he yielded himself pas- 
 sively to the arms that were extended to 
 assist him, for his strength had entirely 
 deserted him, and he was conscious of a 
 sort of trembling sensation coming over 
 him, an evil and sinister presage. 
 
 " Lean on me," " Here's a cushion for 
 you," said those nearest him, offering 
 their breast or shoulder as a support for 
 the death-stricken man. And when they 
 had assured his comfort they struck into 
 " Old Neptune " again, coming in on the 
 refrain, and Jean found himself in the 
 midst of the tuneful band, experiencing 
 a momentary sensation of comfort or 
 rather of diminished suffering by reason 
 of his recumbent position. With head 
 thrown back and half-closed eyes, his 
 delighted gaze took in the entire fairy- 
 like display, from the trucks of the tall 
 masts down to the snowy deck. Rocked 
 lazily by the slow, uniform motion of the 
 gentle swells, those groups of humanity,
 
 246 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 motionless and white as statues of marble, 
 were painted on the dim blue curtain of 
 the night with the vague indistinctness of 
 figures in a dream, and against the sky, 
 decked with the blazing jewels of the 
 southern constellations, were outlined the 
 lofty masts and phantom-like white sails, 
 that, as they swayed under the impulse 
 of the ever-freshening breeze, described 
 with their summits wider arcs among the 
 stars, but swayed so gently and with a 
 movement so regular and uniform that one 
 might have thought it was the heavenly 
 bodies that had suddenly lost their immo- 
 bility and were performing a stately minuet 
 on high. And all the time the singers 
 were casting to the bland wind their clear 
 sparkling notes, that seemed to fly away 
 on wings. In the midst of this transpar- 
 ency, for which there was no name, the 
 transparency of night without its obscurity, 
 that vessel, careening under her cloud of 
 canvas, her deck filled with all those 
 motionless white mariners, ceased to have
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 247 
 
 the aspect of reality. The music, that con- 
 tinuous monotone of fresh young voices, 
 soothing as a lullaby, and the uninterrupted 
 gentle oscillatory motion communicated to 
 all, aud their flight, rapid and easy as a 
 bird's, all served to add to and intensify 
 the impression of immateriality that was 
 conveyed by things visible and tangible. 
 The whole display might have been taken 
 for some unsubstantial, melodious pageant 
 that the trade wind was urging onward to 
 some non-existent haven, in those limitless, 
 shoreless regions, the realm of the infinitely 
 void. 
 
 But not for long did Jean continue to 
 behold the magic spectacle that filled his 
 already enfeebled brain with wonder. The 
 delicious coolness of the night, that to the 
 others brought health and strength, in him 
 only served to hasten the process of mortal 
 disorganization. A vague feeling of dis- 
 comfort began to manifest itself in his chest, 
 limbs and bowels, and developed rapidly 
 into acute pain. Then his legs and arms
 
 248 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 became heavy as lead and lost their power 
 of movement, as in one who had remained 
 too long in a constrained position, and the 
 sensation spread, and kept spreading, first 
 to the loins, then to the chest and larynx. 
 It was like a slow, progressive death, ascend- 
 ing gradually toward the head, that was 
 lucid still and retained its faculty of thought. 
 It reached his lips, and they contracted 
 spasmodically, and when he would have 
 called for assistance on his friends, who had 
 not ceased their song, his tight-locked mouth 
 would not respond: the only sound he 
 could give utterance to was an inarticulate 
 moan, distressful to hear. 
 
 The sailors were alarmed by that sinister 
 cry, which seemed to be wrested from the 
 very depths of his being. Marec, bend- 
 ing tenderly over him, saw the writhing 
 contraction of the lips and the look of sup- 
 plication in his eyes. Then with infinite 
 precaution and the affectionate words of 
 loving brothers, three of them took him in 
 their strong arms, bore him down the lad-
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 249 
 
 der, and laid him on his bed. And now, 
 unconscious of all that was going on around 
 him, helpless as a little child, he lay in the 
 warm infirmary, that on shipboard was 
 called the "death trap."
 
 XL VIII 
 
 HE did not die that night, however. 
 Down below, in the " death trap," the doc- 
 tor brought him back to life. 
 
 For several days he lived with scarcely 
 any other companions than his thoughts, 
 moments of hope alternating with others of 
 chill despair at the prospect of his solitary 
 death. He observed the doctor's direc- 
 tions with scrupulous care, in the one sole 
 thought that had come to dominate him 
 more and more, to last long enough to see 
 his mother once again. Each day there 
 was to be seen lying on his bed a poor pit- 
 iful letter that he had begun to write her ; 
 a letter of farewell that he had commenced 
 when the fever was on him, and into which 
 he infused all his soul ; then exhaustion 
 would supervene and compel him to lay 
 down the pen, and afterward, in a moment 
 
 250
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 251 
 
 of returning hope or of determination not 
 to die, he would tear the sheet in frag- 
 ments. His chest a box of white pine, 
 such as all sailors own stood at his bed's 
 head, containing many precious little ob- 
 jects, the thought of abandoning which 
 grieved him inexpressibly : portraits and 
 letters of that mother whom he so yearned 
 to see once more, many of them very old 
 and yellow with age, most of them having 
 some connection with circumstances more 
 or less memorable of their past ; and there 
 were also two of the note-books of his old 
 college days, in which, on an evening when 
 the sunshine and his dreams alike were 
 bright, he had inscribed the date when 
 he became an eligible candidate for the 
 Sorda. 
 
 He suffered little, but was terribly weak, 
 with a growing weakness for which there 
 was no remedy. His fitful slumbers were 
 disturbed by dreams, and he would awake 
 to find himself lying drenched in a cold 
 night sweat. Evidences of approaching ais-
 
 252 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 solution had begun to manifest themselves 
 in his brain : pitiable hallucinations, delus- 
 ive ideas, and affections of boyhood that 
 returned to mock him. His thoughts re- 
 verted constantly to matters connected with 
 the beginning of his life, and he recalled 
 them with a morbid fidelity and intensity 
 that was almost like second sight. On the 
 other hand, images of women and of love 
 had ceased to trouble him ; for some inscru- 
 table reason, doubtless a physical one diffi- 
 cult of explanation, these images had been 
 the first to die, in his memory that was also 
 about to perish. Forgotten now was that 
 young maid of Rhodes, who, every evening 
 during one blight month of June, had come 
 down the hills to meet him at the old 
 deserted harbor, attracted by the velvety 
 softness of his young eyes ; forgotten, the 
 fair Canadian, who for a time had made 
 very dear to him a certain lonely street in 
 the outskirts of Quebec ; forgotten, all for- 
 gotten. Of Madeleine alone did he think 
 occasionally, because for her his love had
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 253 
 
 been of a more complex nature, more closely 
 associated with the mystery of that inner 
 human entity which we call the soul ; he 
 had glimpses still of her pale face and ar- 
 dent, deep-set young eyes, or seemed to 
 hear the sound of her timid voice in mur- 
 mured conversation at the twilight hour, 
 under the flowering lindens, beneath the 
 new-born leaves on which came pattering 
 down the warm rain of an April evening. 
 But he did not linger on the picture long, 
 turning from it to his mother, to his loved 
 sunny land of Provence, to his own child- 
 hood's days and especially to the days of 
 his first assuming man's attire, of the little 
 brown hat with the velvet ribbon. And 
 unspeakable grief and despair would wring 
 his heart at the sudden thought that never, 
 never again would his eyes behold certain 
 localities in that country, certain things 
 pertaining to that time at the thought, for 
 instance, that he should nevermore tread 
 a certain path, at a bend in which he and 
 his mother had sat down to rest beneath
 
 254 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 the pines, on a Sunday evening, in the 
 springtime, long ago. 
 
 "He will last until the cold weather 
 comes," the doctor said. And he was 
 right ; the trade wind, that blew through 
 the open hatches and down the wind sail, 
 the warm, soft trade, that varied not by 
 day or night, held him in a stationary con- 
 dition.
 
 XLIX 
 
 BUT one evening an immense, dirty-look- 
 ing gray cloud rose above the southern 
 horizon, and, creeping up the heavens, soon 
 formed an impenetrable vault of blackness 
 over all. And the wind that had so long 
 favored them died away, and in the air, 
 that suddenly became chill and piercing, 
 two great albatrosses, the first they had 
 seen, appeared denizens of the sombre 
 austral laud. In the fading light and in 
 the penetrating mist that descended and 
 enwrapped the men as in an icy mantle, it 
 was too dangerous a business to attempt at 
 nightfall to penetrate further into those ill- 
 known seas, overspread by that dense veil 
 of clouds, and where everything was to 
 be feared from the fickle and uncertain 
 weather. 
 
 255
 
 256 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 The next morning the entire aspect of 
 things was changed on board the Saone, on 
 which the sun had ceased to shine. Straw 
 hats were replaced by old fatigue caps, 
 that were pulled well down to protect the 
 ears; the spruce uniforms of clean white 
 duck were discarded for old blue woolen 
 suits, worn and faded, which showed that 
 the industrious moth and voracious cock- 
 roach had been at work on them. On 
 deck there were signs of great activity 
 among the watch whose turn of duty it 
 was. Brand new sails were coming up 
 from below, folded in long cylindrical 
 bundles and supported on the shoulders of 
 wavering, staggering rows of men. Cables 
 of a tawny color, new, like the sails, and 
 redolent of tar, were taken from the hold. 
 As they were released from the coils a gang 
 of sailors would seize the free end, and, 
 starting on a run, " snake " them the ship's 
 length, like endless serpents. Everything 
 was done to the sound of the boatswain's 
 whistle, and the shrill calls, trills and
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 257 
 
 quavers resounded unintermittently on the 
 sharper air, which was beneficial to sound 
 lungs, but mortal to weaker ones. Pre- 
 parations were being made for the coming 
 conflict with wind and waves in that inhos- 
 pitable, treacherous zone. 
 
 The two albatrosses came very near, 
 wheeling in wide circles around the ship ; 
 they were the same that had appeared the 
 night before, and likely as not would con- 
 tinue for weeks to follow in the vessel's 
 wake ; and they maintained an incessant 
 scream in their vile, raucous voice, which 
 resembles nothing so much as the creaking 
 of a rusty weathercock or unoiled pulley. 
 And the quartermaster at the wheel, not 
 appreciating their lugubrious music, shook 
 his fist at the birds and addressed them 
 thus : 
 
 " I say there, you two great dirty spar- 
 rows over yonder, don't you think you 
 might as well grease your pulley a 
 bit." 
 
 The truth was that the two albatrosses
 
 258 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 seemed to him to be singing someone's 
 death song. 
 
 The gale was prompt with its onset, 
 commencing hostilities before the prepara- 
 tions for defense were completed. By the 
 evening of the second day the fearful 
 bellowing of the storm filled the air with 
 its all-powerful voice and the din was 
 deafening. The waves reared their mighty 
 crests and came forward to the attack 
 in long, serried line of battle. And the 
 sailors were aloft in the rigging or out on 
 the plunging yards, performing their duties, 
 so fraught with danger. The poor rough, 
 horny hands and the stubby nails worn 
 down to the quick rasped and scraped on 
 the refractory, water-soaked canvas as they 
 gathered in the slack of the topsails, that 
 were all reduced to a single reef. And 
 faces took on a deeper shade of purple 
 under the influence of the stinging cold, 
 to which they had so long been unaccus- 
 tomed. 
 
 In the " death trap," that was kept her-
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 259 
 
 rnetically closed, the motion was painfully 
 apparent to the patients as the ship alter- 
 nately climbed laboriously to the summit 
 of some hug^e wave and then slid oft* with 
 
 o 
 
 frightful velocity into the depths of the 
 succeeding valley ; the two men who had 
 been so ill were released from their suffer- 
 ing on the following night. 
 
 Jean appeared to be in the last extrem- 
 ity of fever, but he continued to live on, 
 with alternations of wild delirium and 
 deepest prostration, in which his reduced 
 pulse and scarcely perceptible breathing 
 counterfeited death. 
 
 Oh, that letter, the letter for his mother, 
 which he had not written ! That was now 
 his all-engrossing preoccupation, not very 
 clearly defined at times, but always present 
 to his mind, even in slumber and so 
 piteous, so pathetic ! In his moments 
 between sleeping and waking he con- 
 stantly imagined that he was writing to 
 her ; it seemed to him he could see a sheet 
 of paper on the bed, the pen held in his
 
 260 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 fingers, and the characters traced by his 
 hand, telling her of his distress and bidding 
 her farewell. And then, awaking with a 
 start, he would see that it was all a delusion 
 of his senses, that his hand was hanging, 
 heavy and inert, at his bedside, that there 
 was no sheet traced with written characters 
 before him on his counterpane. Then in 
 his despair he would toss himself violently 
 about upon his cot, beseeching the attend- 
 ants to give him writing materials. They 
 answered him as little children are an- 
 swered : 
 
 "Yes, yes; pretty soon, in a few 
 moments. As soon as the fever goes down 
 a little you shall have your inkstand and 
 your box." 
 
 And the nurses exchanged a sorrowful 
 look of compassion. What they did not 
 tell him was that, in one of the ship's more 
 violent lurches, his precious box had rolled 
 to the deck and been dashed in pieces, at 
 the same instant that a great wave came 
 on board, carrying all before it and flooding
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 261 
 
 every compartment of the vessel ; and that 
 the beloved objects, saturated with water 
 of the ocean and fetid bilgeAvater, were 
 nothing but a pitiful mass of pulp : letters, 
 portraits, and the poor note-books of the 
 schoolboy, between whose pages rested, 
 buried forever in oblivion now, his cher- 
 ished hopes of admission to the Borda. 
 
 Poor child, whom nature had destined 
 for a life of insouciance and perennial 
 youth, for love and dreamy reverie, for joy- 
 ous health and the bright smile of gladness, 
 he preserved to the end that boyishness 
 which had been his charm, and also his 
 curse. And yet at certain moments he was 
 one of those seers whose gift of second 
 sight enables them to look into futurity 
 and read the frightful secrets of the infinite. 
 
 O 
 
 But it was as a child, with childish revolts 
 and incredulity and wonder, that he was to 
 face the conqueror, Death ; longing above 
 all else to have his mother by to soothe 
 him with her presence. His soul went out 
 to her in ineffable impulses of tenderness,
 
 262 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 he had a sensation of heartfelt remorse for 
 having at times been somewhat forgetful of 
 her, for having sometimes caused her to 
 suffer in those days when life was exuber- 
 ant within him. Ah, the sweet letters of 
 tears and penitence that he had in mind to 
 write her! In the beyond, the hereafter, 
 he placed no belief, for in this respect, as in 
 so many others, he was a sailor. Seamen 
 are not atheists; they pray, they make 
 offerings to the Virgin and the saints, but 
 with puerile inconsistency they seldom be- 
 lieve in the existence of their ovvn soul 
 beyond this life. And he, too, prayed, in 
 a confused way, and his crude but ardent 
 prayers only asked that his body might 
 not be surrendered to the deep, that he 
 might be permitted to live yet for a brief 
 while, that it might he granted him to 
 die in a certain poor bedchamber, in a cer- 
 tain bed covered wdth a knitted counter- 
 pane, at the side of which should be a face 
 gentler than all faces upon earth, en- 
 framed in bands of soft gray hair. Oh,
 
 JEAN BEKNY, SAILOR 263 
 
 that it were God's will that in the cemetery 
 of Brest, where soon they would be 
 now, he might have a grave at which his 
 mother would come and kneel! And it 
 mio'ht even be that, when the crew were 
 
 O ' 
 
 paid off, the money coming to him would 
 be sufficient to transfer his body to dear 
 Provence and give it sepulture in the soil 
 of his native land. But no, it was not to 
 be ; he felt that life was leaving him too 
 fast and the sea was to be his grave, and 
 his eyes dilated with horror at the thought 
 that before many days his earthly remains 
 would be hurled, wrapped in a shroud of 
 sailcloth, down, down through the meas- 
 ureless depths of the dark waste that lay 
 below. 
 
 At last the final agony set in ; it was 
 bitter and protracted, but the mental part 
 of him had no share in it ; it was wholly 
 material. And on the fourth day of the 
 storm, amid the fury . of the raging, un- 
 chained elements, when the gale was at its 
 height and its uproar filled the heavens,
 
 264 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 death came to him, almost unnoticed by 
 his brother sailors, to whom self-pres- 
 ervation was the ruling instinct for the 
 time being, in those hours of toil and 
 danger.
 
 HE was committed to the deep, and his 
 imniersal passed as a thing of minor con- 
 sequence. 
 
 At break of day on a dark, forbidding 
 morning his remains, sewed in an envelope 
 of coarse duck, were laboriously dragged 
 up the long ladders to the deck by two 
 men, who held their grisly burden by the 
 neck. "What has he with him in the 
 sack ? " one of them asked ; " books ? " 
 It was the note-books of the Borda, his 
 mother's letters, the lid and broken frag- 
 ments of the box, everything that had been 
 his. The man who sewed him in his 
 shroud a humble soul, who had never 
 learned to read had piously placed with 
 him, in his coarse winding sheet, all that 
 remained of the things which were so dear 
 to him. With great difficulty, on account 
 
 265
 
 266 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 of the laboring of the vessel, they suc- 
 ceeded in getting him up the ladder, where, 
 with a brutality that could not be avoided, 
 his unsentient head from time to time 
 bumped against the projecting angles of 
 the woodwork. By a hatchway, that was 
 opened furtively a little space to give him 
 passage, he was delivered to other waiting 
 hands, that raised him to the deck. 
 
 In the heavy weather then prevailing 
 the chaplain, an aged and ailing man, was 
 unable to leave his stateroom to conduct 
 the burial service, and the wave-washed 
 deck was deserted, save for the watch and 
 the men detailed to conduct their com- 
 rade's funeral. 
 
 The ship made a more violent plunge 
 than usual, and just at that moment they 
 launched the body into one of those yawn- 
 ing watery chasms that open and close 
 again immediately. A great wave, topped 
 with a fringe of foam, came up and dashed 
 it against the ship's quarter with a force 
 sufficient to grind all the bones to powder;
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 267 
 
 then it vanished from mortal vision, plung- 
 ing swiftly downward into the realm of 
 silence and unending night, commencing 
 its infinite descent into the unfathomed 
 depths below
 
 LI 
 
 ALMOST immediately, as if by magic, the 
 weather changed. The rage and fury of 
 the elements began to subside, as they had 
 arisen, without apparent cause. The waves, 
 with an air of weariness and lassitude after 
 the conflict, went tumbling over one an- 
 other as they scurried away in disorder, 
 their violence neutralized by the effect of a 
 storm of more ancient date that had been 
 raging in some distant region. 
 
 The two albatrosses, that had remained 
 invisible as long as the gale lasted, now 
 showed themselves again, accompanied by 
 a retinue of cape-pigeons and gray petrels, 
 that in squawking, unnielodious accents 
 proclaimed their insatiable hunger. 
 
 And the wind went down ; it began to 
 be possible to converse without raising the 
 voice to a scream ; the routine of the ship 
 
 268
 
 JEAN BEBNT, SAILOR 269 
 
 resumed something of its usual course in 
 the comparative tranquillity, and the covers 
 of the hatches were removed. 
 
 In the afternoon, the wind still continu- 
 ing to fall, order was again established in 
 almost every quarter of the ship. The 
 Sao tie once more spread her snow-white 
 wings, which had been folded with such 
 difficulty and danger, and the sailors found 
 time to think of him who had departed 
 amid the crash and uproar of the elements. 
 Jean's friends began to reflect with feelings 
 of sorrow and sadness on their loss. And 
 at length came the peaceful evening hour, 
 the hour when the crew is mustered for 
 prayer. 
 
 At the usual order, given by the officer 
 of the watch in a curt, abstracted tone, the 
 bugle sounded. Responsive to the sound 
 two hundred seamen came streaming up 
 from below, like a rising tide, through the 
 narrow conipanionways, and formed in 
 line upon the deck. A hundred to star- 
 board, a hundred to port, forming two
 
 270 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 wavering, shuffling masses of humanity 
 that undulated like a flock of sheep ; me- 
 chanically they fell into line along those 
 low, flimsy bulwarks which alone sepa- 
 rated them from the ravening sea. They 
 were crowded so that their shoulders inter- 
 locked, crowded like cattle on that frail 
 refuge of planks that they called the Saone, 
 and their crowding had in it something 
 unutterably pitiful, that spoke of man's 
 littleness in the midst of that infinite ex- 
 panse of sea and sky, in that debauch of 
 space that was around them on every side, 
 and where, in the roar of the waves, in 
 the cry of the sea-birds, in everything, 
 spoke the voice of mighty Death, the 
 conquerer. 
 
 The chaplain had also come on deck in 
 his black gown that fluttered in the wind. 
 And the oflicer in command, in the same 
 sharp, peremptory tone that he had em- 
 ployed in giving the other necessary com- 
 mands, now ordered : " Prayers ! " but 
 yet with more of feeling in his voice, be-
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 271 
 
 cause, perhaps, there arose in him a memory 
 of the poor fellows whose names would no 
 longer be carried on the ship's muster-roll, 
 and of him who had that very morning 
 been offered as a sacrifice to greedy ocean. 
 " Prayers ! " The ship's bugler, once 
 more distending his cheeks and the veins 
 of his neck, as he had done so many times 
 before, gave to the surrounding outer void 
 that short, staccato call that each evening 
 summons poor Jack to come and say his 
 Pater and Ave Maria. Loud and clear 
 the brazen notes ransj out, on this occa- 
 
 O / 
 
 sion with a strange, unusual tone, over the 
 wild waste of angry water. And the call 
 seemed somehow like an appeal to a 
 power that was very far away, or non- 
 existent, before which their supplications 
 were to be laid for form's sake, hopelessly. 
 " Prayers ! " At the command two hun- 
 dred calloused hands were swiftly raised 
 to two hundred woolen caps, which fell 
 with a simultaneous motion to their owners' 
 side, and every man was silent and motion-
 
 272 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 less. And the two hundred young heads 
 appeared to view, divested of their cover- 
 ing, close-clipped, blond for the most part, 
 shining with bright reflections in the fading 
 light of evening; the brawny shoulders, 
 their contours visible under the well-worn 
 jackets, were closely pressed together in a 
 homogeneous mass and swayed with a 
 gentle motion in unison with the rolling of 
 the ship. 
 
 " Our Father, which art in Heaven," the 
 priest began in a voice that trembled 
 slightly and had not its usual impassive 
 steadiness. And thereat two or three of 
 the younger and more childlike among the 
 crew raised their eyes confidingly to that 
 heaven of which the good man spoke. 
 Night was beginning to draw her veil of 
 darkness over it, and around them, while 
 the recitation of the Pater still went on, 
 the petrels and albatrosses, scavengers of 
 the deep, lingered in the twilight, wheeling 
 in wide circles with the same hoarse cries, 
 chanting, in concert with wind and ocean,
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 273 
 
 the chant of the great transformer of our 
 being, the chant of mighty Death. 
 
 Most of the seamen had mechanically 
 turned their eyes on the black-gowned man 
 while he was praying, and now that their 
 faces were no longer animated by the care- 
 less smile, it was easy to read in them their 
 long inheritance of toil and poverty. All 
 those young countenances, so hardy and 
 vigorous, wore an aspect of hardness and 
 materialism that was intensified by the 
 fatigue of their laborious day, with an inde- 
 scribable expression of humble resignation 
 and passive endurance ; among the Bretons, 
 whose numbers predominated, traces of 
 their primitive semi-barbarism were mani- 
 fest. It was in the eyes alone, which, as 
 they were bent on the priest, it could be 
 seen still preserved the trustful candor 
 of boyhood, that here and there was indi- 
 cated some tendency of their owner toward 
 things spiritual, toward some legendary 
 paradise, some indeterminate, vague notion 
 of eternity; but there were others that
 
 274 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 emitted no light from within, that merely 
 reflected the aspects of external nature, 
 whose owners paused at the most rudiment- 
 ary conceptions, scarce higher than the con- 
 fused dreams of animals. 
 
 " I salute thee, Mary full of grace ; thou 
 art blessed above all women, and Jesus, 
 the fruit of thy womb is blessed 
 His accent was slower and his intonation 
 more broken as he recited the ancient 
 prayer ; at the same time those great 
 children who were listening to his words 
 began to manifest a sort of shame-faced 
 sorrow as Jean's memory rose to their 
 minds; those who had known and loved 
 him evinced a grief that was deep and 
 sincere, while in the little group where 
 were Joal and Marec, who had buried him, 
 every eye was moist. Over the heads of 
 all the men who stood there in line hovered, 
 for the last time, the spirit of him who had 
 that morning been committed to the dark 
 green depths of ocean. 
 
 " Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 275 
 
 us ' The most inattentive lent an ear 
 
 to these words, that they had heard a 
 hundred times before, which now appeared 
 fraught with new significance. And when 
 
 o o 
 
 the chaplain, after a preliminary pause and 
 speaking in a tone of yet deeper solemnity, 
 uttered these last words, so sublime in 
 their simplicity : " for us, poor sinners 
 now and in our hour of death," quick- 
 coming tears sprang to the eyes of two or 
 three among the listening men and rolled 
 down their cheeks, like a refreshing shower 
 of rain. 
 
 "Amen!" The young blond heads all 
 bent as when a field of grain is rippled 
 by a passing breeze, a few hands weiw 
 swiftly raised to breasts and foreheads, and 
 all was over ; the wind freshened with th 
 approach of night, and men began to sling 
 their hammocks amid an uproar of jests 
 and laughter, and thoughtless gayety 
 reigned again on board. Prayer and 
 thoughts of death seemed to be left behind 
 
 <j 
 
 in the immense, ever-changing void that
 
 276 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 was constantly receding in the distance. 
 On that vessel where his comrades had 
 beheld him die Jean's image was already 
 grown pale and indistinct, suddenly thrust 
 away into the darkest corner of men's 
 memory. In their exuberance of animal 
 life those young beings were quick to 
 forget. 
 
 Out of respect to him there was no sing- 
 ing that night, but the next day the song 
 " Old Neptune," started at first by a few 
 voices, was soon taken up and sung in 
 chorus. And as if all on board were as it 
 had been, the Savm pursued her long and 
 weaiy way toward France.
 
 LII 
 
 IT was a month later, on one of those 
 April days, made up of showers and sun- 
 shine and in which the cold of winter lingers 
 still, that are so common in Brittany, when 
 the good ship came to anchor in the harbor 
 of Brest, .where the anxious mother was 
 watching for her arrival. 
 
 There had been no further sickness on 
 board. After Jean, indeed, three other 
 unfortunates had been consigned to a grave 
 in the infinite waste of water, but that 
 was away down in the southern hemi- 
 sphere, in those distant regions where the 
 albatross wings its solitary flight. The 
 remainder of the patients had recovered, 
 and the more bracing atmosphere had 
 quickly restored them to a condition of 
 vigorous health. 
 
 277
 
 278 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 All the sailors, even those of them who 
 had neither mother, wife nor sweetheart, 
 and for whose coming there was no one on 
 the lookout, were wild with joyous excite- 
 ment to be at home once more. When the 
 anchor was over the bow and everything 
 made snug alow and aloft, there was not 
 much of an attempt made to enforce dis- 
 cipline, and things on board were at sixes 
 and sevens. The officers, too, were only 
 human beings, and, like the men, their 
 thoughts were elsewhere; knowing that 
 Avhat had been a long and dangerous service 
 was now virtually ended, they winked at 
 the prevailing want of order. They had 
 no more than entered the port than disag- 
 gregation commenced ; it was the begin- 
 ning of the end ; the ship was going out 
 of commission, involving the dispersal of 
 all those men and inanimate objects that 
 for more than two years had been facing 
 danger in distant seas, bound together by 
 ties so close, having one common name, 
 governed by one spirit of amour propre,
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 27D 
 
 forming one body ruled, it may almost be 
 said, by a single soul. 
 
 The view was a pleasant one upon the 
 whole that greeted their eyes on that spring 
 clay, in that French roadstead, after their 
 long absence, although there was menace 
 of wind and rain in the dark clouds that 
 hung low in the humid atmosphere, pro- 
 pelled by fitful gusts of air. 
 
 The health officer had been sent for, 
 whose authorization they must have before 
 they could communicate with the outer 
 world, with their new-recovered France. 
 And a few boats came up and hung around 
 the Sabne, such unwieldy and clumsily 
 constructed affairs as pervade the waters 
 of Brest, heavily sparred to meet the per- 
 petual bad weather that prevails in those 
 stormy regions, with sails of coarse brown 
 canvas, and all of them displaying scars 
 that they had received in battle with their 
 enemy, the northwester. The spectacle 
 certainly lacked the cheerful gayety of the 
 Mediterranean ports, Jean's native country,
 
 280 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 where hundreds of small, frail barks, 
 bedizened with flags and painted in bright 
 colors, filled with laughing, chattering men 
 and women, come dancing over the tranquil 
 water to cany by storm the home-arriving 
 vessel. 
 
 In these boats, which were made to pre- 
 serve a respectful distance pending the 
 arrival of the health officer, were women 
 with all sorts of wares and merchan- 
 dise for sale, laundresses, boarding-house 
 keepers, little sewing-girls, all bent on 
 relieving poor Jack of a portion of his 
 hard-earned wages ; and occasionally, also, 
 a mother, a sister, or a young person who 
 simply styled herself an "acquaintance," 
 would call on some particular sailor by 
 name and, when he presented himself at 
 one of the gun-ports, would greet him 
 cordially while waiting for permission to 
 go on board and give him a warmer saluta- 
 tion. 
 
 Those of the crew who were so unfor- 
 tunate as to have no acquaintances among
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 281 
 
 the female portion of Brest's population 
 did not allow that fact to deter them from 
 using their eyes, but resting their elbows 
 on the hammock nettings, with faces 
 expressive of contentment at once more 
 beholding civilized women's faces, ex- 
 
 O ' 
 
 changed profound reflections on the fashion 
 of the ladies' attire, especially commending 
 a certain little corsage that had been 
 introduced during their absence. 
 
 By way of killing time the little group 
 of friends that was so soon to be dissolved 
 forever, embracing among its numbers 
 Joal, Marec and Kerboulhis, was collected 
 on the forecastle, looking, laughing, and 
 talking of whatever came in their heads. 
 
 But all at once Pierre Joal, with a face 
 as blanched as if he had seen a ghost, 
 darted back, pulling the others after him by 
 the arm : " Jean's mother ! ! ! " And the 
 five men, like frightened children, first 
 stooped to hide behind the nettings, then, 
 bent almost double, retreated to the centre 
 of the deck where they could not be seen.
 
 282 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 Jean's mother ! yes, it was she, who had 
 coine forth from her home and was there, 
 close at the ship's side, with eager, ques- 
 tioning eyes dilated wide, half from joy, 
 half from alarmed impatience. Among all 
 those smiling young faces that lined the 
 nettings of the Saone she had sought her 
 boy, and had not found him, had not 
 found him yet. 
 
 For months she had been looking for- 
 ward to her son's return, dreaming of it by 
 night, planning and preparing for it by 
 day; she had done her best to beautify 
 their humble little home, to which they 
 both, however, because they had lived 
 there together some little space of time, 
 were beginning to feel attached, inasmuch 
 as it was beyond them to secure a better 
 one. To his chamber in particular she had 
 devoted all her loving care. By dint of 
 economy, patient toil, and her inherent 
 ingenuity and good taste, she had effected 
 her embellishments without trenching on
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 283 
 
 her little capital, which she had placed out 
 at interest. And that morning, when the 
 old watchman, whom she had engaged for 
 the service several days before, came and 
 notified her that the Saone was signaled 
 
 O 
 
 and would anchor in the roadstead in two 
 hours' time, she made haste to put every- 
 thing in order about the apartment, went 
 out and purchased flowers for the vases, 
 and hired a woman to come in and cook 
 and serve the evening meal. Her attire, 
 
 O ' 
 
 too, had been a subject of deep thought 
 and anxiety to her ; as he had it so at heart 
 that she should always be a lady in exter- 
 nals, in ordering her new hat she had given 
 directions that it should have a feather in 
 it a vanity that she had not indulged 
 herself with for the last five years a gray 
 feather, of a shade she felt sure would 
 please him. But when she came to dress 
 preparatory to going down to the harbor, 
 she hesitated long, owing to the unsettled 
 condition of the w r eather, whether or not 
 she should wear that fine new hat that she
 
 284 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 had bought to do honor to their Sunday 
 evening walks. She made up her nrind to 
 put it on, however, for the greater glory of 
 that son who liked to see her present a 
 brave appearance before the other sailors 
 and the officers of the ship. 
 
 When, as they left the town behind them, 
 the boatman to whom she had entrusted 
 herself pointed to a ship in the distance 
 that had barely got her aucher down, and 
 said : " There she is, your Saone ! " a sud- 
 den fit of trembling came over her, with a 
 slight sensation of dizziness. 
 
 How would he look, what appearance 
 would her Jean present after his long ab- 
 sence? She felt that her mind would not 
 be at rest until her eyes had reassured her 
 on that score. She thought of the dysen- 
 tery and the fevers so prevalent in Cochin 
 China, some slight attacks of which he had 
 confessed to having experienced. And 
 suddenly the matter appeared to her in a 
 graver light than it had done before ; she 
 recalled to mind those young men whose
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 285 
 
 return she had witnessed, so ghastly pale, 
 their constitution gone, who slowly wasted 
 away in spite of their mothers' care. And 
 as the Saone drew nearer and her tall bul- 
 warks towered high and ever higher above 
 the short, tumbling sea of the open road- 
 stead, she thought how soon she was now 
 to know the best or worst, and felt her 
 heart assailed by alternating emotions of 
 joy and dread, each more poignant than the 
 other; but it was joy that predominated, 
 with an eager, trembling impatience to 
 clasp him in her arms and give him a 
 mother's kiss. 
 
 Again she scanned the long row of faces 
 that rose above the bulwarks and stretched 
 without break or interruption from, fore- 
 castle to quarterdeck. Her boy, why was 
 he not there upon the deck, with all the 
 others ? Her heart sank and a sensation 
 of icy dread came over her incontinent 
 merely because she had not seen him yet 
 and still there was nothing strange in that, 
 as she strove to make herself understand,
 
 286 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 since he might be on duty in the between- 
 decks. Her fears mastered her judgment ; 
 she lost her head for a moment and di- 
 rected her boatman to run his craft in 
 closer, heedless of the warning gestures of 
 the sentry at the gangway, a rough untu- 
 tored lad of Brittany, who held his musket 
 tight clutched in one hand and with the 
 other signaled them, " Keep off, keep off ! 
 You can't come on board ; it is not per- 
 mitted yet ! " 
 
 On board the ship Jean's five friends, who 
 had gathered about the foot of the main- 
 mast, held a consultation in whispered, 
 frightened tones. What was to be done ? 
 Notify the officer of the deck, opined 
 Marec. M. Tanguy was on duty, a good 
 fellow and a gentleman, who would come 
 and break the news to her gently. 
 
 "Ah, poor lady!" Pierre Joal replied, 
 " he may break it gently or abruptly, it's 
 all one, with what there is to tell her." 
 
 Merciful Heavens ! and there was the 
 health boat corning alongside, almost on
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 287 
 
 board of them. It would not be possible 
 to keep the poor mother off longer, she 
 must be allowed to come on board with the 
 others; nay, she must be nearest of them 
 all, holding on by the rungs of the side- 
 ladder, doubtless, in spite of orders to the 
 contrary, for even now they could hear her 
 voice demanding of the sentry in altered, 
 palpitating tones, vvhere was Jean Berny f 
 And the young man, unversed in the world's 
 ways, but who had nevertheless known 
 from the beginning that it was his com- 
 rade's mother, remained like a fixture at 
 the gangway, where his appointed station 
 was, his face of a bright scarlet up to the 
 very roots of his hair, feigning not to under- 
 stand the question that came to him from 
 below, turning his head and casting beseech- 
 ing looks on those who had been the dead 
 
 O 
 
 man's friends, as if appealing to them to 
 come to his assistance, and quickly. 
 
 " Jean Berny you know whom I mean- 
 Jean Berny, the quartermaster ?" the 
 poor, supplicating voice went on, now
 
 288 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 almost inaudible in its anguish and dis- 
 tress. 
 
 Then Pierre, in his alarm at the immi- 
 nent prospect of her boarding the ship, 
 suddenly resolved upon a course that would 
 bring matters to a crisis. Taking from his 
 pocket the little book in which he kept the 
 roll of his boat's crew, he wrote with a 
 pencil in large, unsteady characters : " Jean 
 Bemy died at sea, a month ago," tore out 
 the leaf, folded it once across, and ran and 
 gave it to the sentiy : " Give her that, my 
 boy, give her that, quick !" and thereon fled 
 to the depths of the ship, with a great 
 dread on him, as if he had struck her with 
 a knife, and followed by the other four, 
 who no more than he could endure to hear 
 that mother's cry of anguish. 
 
 When they returned to the deck a few 
 minutes later a cold, penetrating rain . was 
 falling and the wind was blowing. All 
 the small boats, without exception, had 
 either left or were making ready to leave,
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 289 
 
 their skippers terrified by the squall that 
 had come up so quickly and had such an 
 ugly look about it. 
 
 With timid, hesitating steps they 
 approached the gangway to see what had 
 become of the boat that contained Jean 
 Berny's mother and they recognized it 
 without difficulty, ten yards away on the 
 ship's quarter, just finishing getting up its 
 sail ; in the stern sheets, on the flooring, 
 was a human form that one of the boat- 
 men was holding in restraint, because it 
 struggled as if with an intention of casting 
 itself overboard. A piece of coarse sail- 
 cloth had been spread over it, as if it had 
 been a corpse, but the protecting canvas 
 was insufficient to conceal a woman's be- 
 drabbled, rain-soaked hat, with a gray 
 feather pitifully sweeping the muddy 
 planks, and a hand, from which the glove 
 had been partially removed, whose fingers 
 were stained with, blood. The little Breton 
 sentry, whose face was pale enough now, 
 with a great tear trickling down each
 
 290 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 cheek, said to them in explanation ; " It 
 was this way, you see ; she made a grab 
 for the ladder, thinking to climb on board, 
 and the iron bar stripped her finger-nails 
 clean off." 
 
 " My God, my God ! " said Pierre Joal, in 
 deep, low- toned accents, " my Lord and 
 God ! but that was a sorrowful sight to 
 see, though ! " He did not long continue 
 to see the sight, however, for a mist came 
 before his eyes ; he thought of his own 
 mother, and his fortitude abandoned him 
 entirely ; he gave a great gulp and choked 
 back a rising sob, and the tears streamed 
 down his face, mingling with the driving 
 rain that was inundating everything.
 
 LIII 
 
 SHE was in her own home, whither she 
 had been conducted or carried by someone 
 unknown to her and laid upon her bed, on 
 which she had remained stretched, for how 
 many hours she could not have told ; wear- 
 ing still her pretty new dress, now ruined 
 by rain and bilgewater, and on her feet 
 her muddy shoes, that had soiled the 
 immaculate white counterpane. On her 
 wounded hand was a rude dressing that 
 someone had placed there, but she had dis- 
 arranged it amid the writhings and con- 
 vulsive movements of her arms and the 
 red drops were oozing forth again. 
 
 All through the'night she had had spells 
 of heavy stupor, illuminated from within 
 by fitful, incoherent flashes of conscious- 
 ness, in which images of her dead boy were 
 
 291
 
 292 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 ever present, and each time that she aroused 
 from one of those somnolent spells her 
 awaking was more heart breaking in its 
 lucidity, as soon as a few brief seconds had 
 served to banish the illusion that she had 
 been dreaming. The hideous reality, on 
 the contrary, ever continued to assert itself 
 more and more distinctly. In her poor head, 
 that was gradually shaking off the effect 
 produced by the first benumbing blow, the' 
 horrible thing was establishing itself as a 
 fact, ever assuming more substantial pro- 
 portions, that she was to carry with her as 
 
 long as life endured 
 
 When she awoke this time and opened 
 her eyes after a longer period of somnolency 
 it was daylight. The bright morning sun- 
 shine was streaming into the room, impas- 
 sive as if life had known no change since 
 yesterday. It must be morning, the begin- 
 ning of another fugitive day, it mattered 
 not what, a day of spring like all the rest. 
 She awoke with the indifference of a woman 
 dead, for time and for eternity and for all
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 293 
 
 things beside. With, the horrible impres- 
 sion of irremediable, annihilating disaster, 
 that was slow to define itself clearly, how- 
 ever, in the tardily progressive return of 
 her dazed and wearied consciousness, she 
 looked on surrounding objects and beheld 
 them as from the bottom of a pit, as if she 
 were already laid in her grave. She had 
 ceased to delude herself with the hope that 
 it was all a fantastic, evil dream that would 
 pass away ; no, the knowledge of the re- 
 ality of her remediless loss was now im- 
 pressed indelibly on her mind. Before 
 proceeding further to collect her thoughts, 
 she took note, always with the most per- 
 fect indifference and unconcern, of the 
 disorder that reigned among the few poor 
 objects that until now had been guarded 
 with such jealous care. Her bed defiled by 
 the mud off her shoes ; the hat with the 
 gray feather, \^hich looked as though it had 
 been dragged through the gutter, thrown 
 negligently on a chair ; and on the mantel- 
 shelf the most fondly cherished of her
 
 294 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 vases, which she had brought from their 
 old Provencal home, overturned and broken, 
 its flowers scattered on the floor. Then her 
 glance fell on two women who were sitting 
 at her bedside two women of the neigh- 
 borhood who had taken turns during the 
 night to watch and restrain her from doing 
 violence on herself and at last the atro- 
 cious thing burst on her memory with more 
 implacable distinctness : Ah, her boy ! 
 her boy, her Jean ! And raising herself 
 with a violent start to a sitting posture on 
 the bed, as if some spring within her had 
 suddenly given way, rending and lacerating 
 her being, she gave utterance to a succession 
 of appalling shrieks, tearing her forehead 
 with what nails were left to her, compress- 
 ing her head with both her hands as if she 
 would crush out the horrible anguish that 
 was within. And while she relieved her 
 soul of its burden of misery.by that long 
 wailing cry that it froze the blood to hear, 
 the two watchers, women of the people, 
 sat by and looked at each other silently,
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 295 
 
 through eyes dim with tears, for they, too, 
 were mothers, and an innate sentiment of 
 delicacy restrained them from intruding on 
 her sorrow with unavailing words. 
 
 But presently, seized by one of those 
 imperious impulses that often visit those 
 in torment, impulses that prompt to fly, to 
 cast one's self from lofty places, to beat 
 one's head against stone walls, she leaped 
 quickly from, her bed, holding with trem- 
 bling fingers by the white curtains ; then 
 the two women also rose, apprehensive of 
 what she might attempt to do. Her face, 
 seen by the broad light of day, had 
 changed and was grown ten years older, 
 ravaged and wasted in a single night by 
 all the fatigue of her life of humble toil, of 
 
 O ' 
 
 unfruitful struggle, of vain waiting. Her 
 eyes had in them an ugly and hateful 
 expression that was new to them and that 
 suffering had doubtless summoned from 
 the dark recesses of her soul, and in addi- 
 tion to all that, what with her soiled dress, 
 her disordered _hair and the sullen droop
 
 296 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 of the lip, she looked like a woman of the 
 people, she had the air of one of those 
 poor creatures who have succumbed to 
 poverty, an air that would have pained 
 her Jean more than all, had he been there 
 to see. 
 
 To make an end of it, that seemed the 
 sole thing possible left her to do throw 
 open a window, hurl herself out, and end 
 the chapter of her life on the cold hard 
 stones below ! But even the thought of 
 death brought no sense of satisfaction to 
 her distracted brain ; it would be inade- 
 quate, would settle nothing to her liking. 
 In the first place her despair, in revolt 
 against the cruel, unseeing God who had 
 done that thing in revolt, too, against man- 
 kind and against all felt the need of 
 remaining yet a while on earth, to protest 
 and curse her fate. Again, to leave the 
 world like that, a poor, self-slain old 
 woman, whose remains men would come 
 and carry oft' with sensations of loathing 
 and disgust, would be a slur cast on her
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 297 
 
 son, would be wanting in the respect due 
 to his memory. Moreover, she being dead, 
 there would be no living creature upon 
 earth to cherish his remembrance ; the 
 adored image that she carried in her heart, 
 the only image of him that subsisted, 
 would be destroyed, he would be the 
 more quickly buried in the depths of the 
 dark void and these considerations, acting 
 on her mind in a confused, ill-defined way, 
 served to restrain her. And yet, what 
 was she to do ? Where was she to look to 
 find the courage that should enable her to 
 live on without him in a long and hopeless 
 future ? 
 
 She dragged herself wearily up and 
 down the chamber, casting herself down in 
 corners and resting her head against the 
 wall. 
 
 As she passed the table she unintention- 
 ally swept off some of the small objects on 
 it and broke them, and when one of the 
 women who had been there over night 
 interfered and begged her to "be more
 
 298 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 reasonable," she returned, and with a 
 soul-harrowing gesture, broke what re- 
 mained those things that she prized most, 
 and that she bad preserved for years and 
 years with religious care. She felt an 
 unreasoning irritation against that woman, 
 who had no business there and insisted 
 that she should take heed to trifles like 
 those at such a moment, and was inclined 
 to let her know that she cared not for her, 
 or for her preaching, or for anything in the 
 wide world ; that all was void, that nothing 
 existed longer now that her Jean was 
 dead. 
 
 She shed no tears ; it was nearly twenty- 
 four hours since the horrible little piece of 
 white paper had been handed her by that 
 sailor on the Saone, and she had not shed 
 a tear. Her features wore an indescrib- 
 able expression of fixity that was almost 
 sternness, her nose was pinched and thin, a 
 strongly marked vertical furrow occupied 
 the middle of her forehead and extended 
 to the eyes. Her lips and tongue were
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 299 
 
 hot and dry ; she had a sensation as if her 
 brain had been removed and replaced by 
 a heavy mass of iron, and her temples 
 seemed to be hooped with a tight-con- 
 stricted band, likewise of iron. 
 
 She had moments of comatose uncon- 
 sciousness, somewhat like the somnolent 
 spells of the previous horror-fraught night ; 
 then would come the terrible awakening, 
 with its irresistible impulse to beat herself 
 about the head and shriek with agony, to 
 disburden herself of those long, hoarse 
 groans that comfort a little while they 
 last. 
 
 Thus passed all the morning and almost 
 all the day. She put oft' the moment of 
 dying, principally because she was watched, 
 and she found the presence of those women 
 irksome, who persisted so obstinately in 
 remaining there. In her more lucid 
 moments her despair continually gained 
 greater strength and depth, penetrating her 
 with its mortal chill to the very marrow of 
 her bones ; each time she evoked a fresh
 
 300 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 memory of Jean, each time one of their 
 plans, now dashed to the ground and 
 ruined hopelessly, came to her mind, she 
 felt the grasp of the inexorable hand upon 
 her, tighter, more relentless 
 
 What had her boy done to God, he, her 
 son, her Jean, her handsome Jean, her idol, 
 her sole treasure upon earth ! Never an 
 instant's happiness for him ! Why had 
 childhood and youth been so harsh and 
 unkind to him ? Denied and cast off, or 
 nearly so, by his relatives down yonder, 
 because he had the misfortune to be 
 poor ; then abandoned and forgotten by that 
 Madeleine, by all the world! And now, 
 to end all, this miserable death, far from 
 his mother and they had cast him into 
 the sea, like refuse ! 
 
 Her thoughts reverted constantly to the 
 window that she must open, to the cruel 
 flagstones below that were waiting to 
 receive her body, but each time respect for 
 the memory of her dead boy restrained her 
 from carrying out her purpose and also an-
 
 JEAN BEENY, SAILOR 301 
 
 other and more trivial consideration that had 
 of late presented itself to her. She called to 
 mind her Jean's attachment for certain small 
 objects of his own, brought from Provence, 
 that he had intrusted to her care, and for 
 other articles of use or ornament in their 
 humble home that were owned by them in 
 common. She thought regretfully of those 
 she had broken but now. As for the others, 
 into what hands would they fall when she 
 should be no more, what profaning touch 
 awaited them ? That was a matter that 
 demanded her attention ; she would wait 
 for the morrow to give her clearer ideas on 
 the subject. And while thinking of those 
 poor, paltry little things, it seemed to her 
 a moment as if that mass of iron in her 
 head were softening, were on the point of 
 melting, and that the tension of her feelings 
 was about to relax ; but no, her eyes 
 remained dry, her bosom was unshaken by 
 a sob ; her grief was not yet ripe for 
 tears. 
 
 A sudden desire came over her to look
 
 302 JEAN BEENT, SAILOR 
 
 again on the pictures of her boy, all the 
 pictures, taken at different ages, that she 
 had kept together in one collection. She 
 had scarcely given them a thought for the 
 past two months, engrossed as she was with 
 anticipations of their coining meeting, 
 when her eyes were to feast on a Jean who 
 would doubtless be quite unlike him of 
 other days, a full-grown man, handsome as 
 the day, a Jean of twenty -four. She ran to 
 her closet to get the portraits, tossing the 
 objects on the shelves this way and that in 
 her impatient haste. Among them was 
 one that she loved above all the rest, de- 
 picting him as a sailor, with his bright 
 boyish smile upon his face ; this photograph 
 was informed with that visible but myster- 
 iously inexplicable something which pro- 
 ceeds from the soul, and that men call 
 expression; a last reflection of his soul that 
 now was wandering in the great realm of 
 night and darkness lingered in that small 
 image, upon which the mother's gaze was 
 bent. And as she gazed, as if avaricious
 
 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 303 
 
 of her suffering and unwilling to spare her- 
 self a single pang, as she held it to her 
 eyes and looked at it more closely, she saw 
 that the paper, now yellow with age, 
 was dotted with minute white specks, the 
 effect of the humid atmosphere of Brest. 
 So, she was not to be allowed even to keep 
 his picture ; that, too, was to be taken from 
 her, like all the rest ! 
 
 Oh, and the "little hat!" She felt an 
 uncontrollable, frantic impulse that bade 
 her look on it again, and touch it, at once, 
 without delay. Approaching the window, 
 where the light was stronger, she opened 
 with feverish haste the old green bandbox, 
 removed the protecting gauze that en- 
 wrapped the precious relic, and there, faded 
 and antiquated, it lay in the pale sunshine 
 of the northern spring, the " little hat " 
 that had been first assumed, down there in 
 bright, warm Provence, to do honor to that 
 luminous Easter festival, now buried in 
 the past with the other swift vanished 
 years. To Jean it had been a symbol of
 
 304 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 all that was best and brightest in his happy, 
 petted childhood ; it had served to remind 
 him of the handsome clothes he was given 
 to wear on Sundays in the past, and of all 
 the luxury of other days in his Provencal 
 home a very modest luxury, it is true, 
 but that the poor child, when he was be- 
 come a sailor, took pleasure in magnifying 
 in recollection. And the gracious, curly 
 head that once had worn that little hat, with 
 its ribbon of brown velvet, having developed 
 rapidly into a virile head, had been granted 
 barely sufficient time to dream a few 
 dreams that were never to be realized, to 
 experience the delicious trouble of love, 
 and now, the sport and plaything of the 
 billows in the obscure depths of ocean, it 
 was but a nameless nothing, of less account, 
 more neglected and forgotten in the great 
 scheme of infinity than the least of the 
 pebbles on the shore 
 
 The mother turned it over and over in 
 her nerveless, trembling hands, and never 
 had the "little hat" appeared to her so
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 305 
 
 antiquated and old-fashioned as to-day, 
 such a sorry little object, so like a relic of 
 a dead child. She even detected a spot 
 where moths had eaten the velvet, and 
 here and there were patches of white 
 mold : the beginning of the labor of the 
 infinitely small creatures that in the end 
 are appointed to triumph over all, and that 
 commence by destroying those objects on 
 which we have been so childish as to place 
 our affections. 
 
 What was she to do now with the " little 
 hat" that her Jean had so often recom- 
 mended to her care ? To think that, wiien 
 she was gone, there would be no one in all 
 the world, no living soul who had loved 
 her boy a little, to whom she could leave 
 this souvenir of him. What, then, was she 
 to do? destroy it with her own hands, 
 commit it to the flames ? She had not the 
 courage. Oh, mon Dieu ! what was she to 
 do with it ? And the existence of the little 
 brown felt head-covering brought to her 
 distracted brain an additional and more
 
 306 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 horrible complication. It was an obstacle 
 that kept her from dying ; and yet, even 
 supposing that she were to condemn her- 
 self, a poor, forlorn old woman, to drag out 
 a lingering, lonely life in guarding with 
 useless obstinacy the trifles that had been 
 his what then ? There must come an end 
 sometime, and the fate of the loved objects 
 would only be the worse; the dear gar- 
 ments profaned by the touch of strange, 
 mercenaiy hands, sold to the old-clothes- 
 man and the second-hand dealer 
 
 Oh, the pitiful thought, the " little hat," 
 the dear little hat of that long-vanished 
 happy Eastertide, being carried away 
 among filthy rags and refuse in the basket 
 of a rag-picker ! She pictured the thing 
 in her mind's eye, and at the suggestion it 
 seemed to her that there was a general 
 breaking up of everything within her; this 
 time the mass of iron that had so oppressed 
 her did actually melt and dissolve away, in 
 her head, in her heart, everywhere through- 
 out her being. Her bosom, shaken at first
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 307 
 
 by a few convulsive movements, presently 
 began to labor with a quicker and more 
 interrupted motion than in ordinary breath- 
 ing, and finally she sank into a chair, 
 bowed her head upon the table, and with 
 thick-coming sobs wept the first scalding 
 tears of the childless mother. 
 
 Bat it was only a physical crisis, the 
 equilibrium of life reasserting itself, one of 
 those reactions of the overtaxed nervous 
 system that are generally brought about 
 by the veriest trifles, and that afford a little 
 temporary relief to the afflicted one by 
 substituting one ill for another. 
 
 True peace of mind it seemed as if she 
 was never to look for more, never in this 
 life. She was like one condemned to tor- 
 ture, whose punishment consists in remain- 
 ing bound to a stake or to a cross until 
 death comes to his release, and who has 
 not even the distraction of bodily pain to 
 dull his thoughts while waiting for the last 
 stern agony. Heavy gates of lead had 
 closed before her, shutting out life, as
 
 308 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 
 
 impenetrable and immovable as the gates 
 of hell. Alone, alone in the world, a child- 
 less, hopeless, prayerless old woman, who 
 would some day soon be taken up from the 
 beach, drowned, or from the pavement, a 
 blood-stained corpse
 
 LIV 
 
 BUT about twilight of that second day, 
 as she sat there on her chair, from which 
 she had not stirred, her eyes dry once more, 
 her temples throbbing with fever, her dis- 
 tracted mind incapable of thought as she 
 sat there, her roving gaze rested on the 
 wall in front of her, where were two 
 images : the Virgin, white in her white 
 veils, with the date of Jean's first com- 
 munion inscribed below, and a crucifix, 
 Christ's head bowed upon the cross. The 
 women who had watched, seeing her more 
 calm, had left her, and she was alone as 
 it was appointed she should be from now 
 on till death. 
 
 In the deepening shadows a few rays of 
 the dying daylight, at once an illumination 
 and an appeal, lingered on the two sacred 
 images. And as she gazed on them with 
 
 309
 
 310 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 her poor haggard eyes, a great wave of 
 tenderness swept o'er her, that this time, 
 however, came from the deepest recesses of 
 her soul ; a feeling of deep peace gradually 
 filled all her being, and tears came to her 
 eyes again, but less salt and bitter than 
 they had been before. Her great revolt 
 was ended ; acting in obedience to a 
 sudden impulse, she rose and swiftly 
 crossed the room, and cast herself upon her 
 knees before the images, with face upraised 
 toward them and there all her being was 
 dissolved in a sweet ecstasy yet more pro- 
 found, that caused her tears to flow as from 
 an abundant spring. The celestial prom- 
 ised land appeared to the bereaved 
 mother, with all the pledges and all the 
 radiant allurement of Christian immortality, 
 as it is understood by those of simple faith 
 and as it must be to afford them comfort 
 and consolation : her Jean, her well-be- 
 loved and she would meet again up there 
 above; her Jean, unchanged, in human 
 shape and still a child, still wearing his
 
 JEAN BERNY, SAILOR 311 
 
 bright boyish smile of earth, who would 
 remember their old home in Provence, 
 would remember the "little hat" and the 
 joyous Easter Sundays of the vanished past. 
 
 Yes, all was peace once more, and her 
 rebellious feelings were quieted, as fever 
 is subdued by the application of cooling 
 lotions. Between those two souls, the son's 
 and mother's, each issue of the other, some 
 mysterious link that had snapped had 
 been re-connected, and this tie served to 
 give to the soul that remained on earth the 
 illusion of the enduring existence of the 
 soul that had departed. 
 
 In her present mood of resignation she 
 could see how it might be possible for her 
 to take up the broken thread of her life 
 and spend the remainder of her days in 
 solitude, with her son looking down on her 
 from his remote abode ; she had a vision of 
 her little home, once more made neat and 
 orderly, which she would never leave, and 
 of her mourning garments, that she would 
 cause to be fashioned becomingly, of
 
 312 JEAN BERNT, SAILOR 
 
 decent stuff and shape, for his sake, from 
 respect to his memoiy, because he had 
 always wished to see her attired as a lady. 
 And she spoke between her sobs, saying, 
 "Yes, Lord, I will submit to thy will. 
 Yes, Lord, I will live on, I will work, I will 
 do niy best until the time comes when 
 thou shall see fit to take me to thyself ." 
 
 O Christ of those who weep, O Virgin 
 immaculate and calm, O all ye adorable 
 myths and legends that nothing can replace, 
 that alone sustain the childless mother 
 and the motherless child and give them 
 strength and courage to live on, that make 
 our tears less bitter and bring us hope and 
 cheer in the last dark hour, blessings rest 
 on ye ! 
 
 And we, whom ye have abandoned for 
 evermore, let us bow our faces in the dust 
 and kiss with tears the traces of your 
 retreating footsteps. 
 
 THE END.
 
 A 000129801 7