Sometimes I held him captive near the piano by playing for him the haunting music of Chopin which I had but just begun to understand. He was disquieted6 however by my playing, and he said that Chopin's music was too exuberant7 and at the same time too enervating8 for me. He had come among us so recently that he was better able to judge of me than were the others, and he realized perhaps that my intellect was in danger of becoming warped9 through the nature of the artistic10 and intellectual effort it put forth11; no doubt he thought Chopin and the “Donkey's Skin” equally dangerous, and considered that I was becoming excessively affected12 and abnormal in spite of my fits of childish behavior. I am sure that he thought even my amusements were fanciful and unhealthy. Be that as it may, he one day, to my great joy, decreed that I should learn to ride horseback, but that was the only change his coming made in my education. Cowardice13 prompted me to defer14 discussion of those weighty questions appertaining to my future which I was so anxious to talk over with him; I preferred to take my time, and, too, I shrunk from making a decision, and thus by my silence I sought to prolong my childhood. Besides, I did not consider it a pressing matter after all, inasmuch as he was to be with us for some years. . . .
But one fine morning, although we had reckoned so largely on keeping him, there came news of a higher rank and an order from the naval15 department commanding him to start without delay for a distant part of the orient, where an expedition was organizing.
After a few days which were mainly spent in preparing for that unforeseen campaign he left us as if borne away by a gust16 of wind.
Our adieus were less sad this time, for we did not expect him to be absent more than two years. . . . In reality it was his eternal farewell to us; whatever is left of his body lies at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, towards the middle of the Bay of Bengal.
When he had departed, while the noise of the carriage that was bearing him away could still be heard, my mother turned to me with an expression of love that touched me to the very innermost fibre of my being; and as she drew me to her she said with the emphasis of conviction: “Thank God, at least we shall keep you with us!”
Keep me! . . . They would keep me! . . . Oh! . . . I lowered my head and turned my eyes away, for I could feel that their expression had changed, had become a little wild. I could not respond to my mother with a word or a caress17.
Such a serene18 confidence upon her part distressed19 me cruelly, for the moment in which I heard her say, “We shall keep you,” I understood, for the first time in my life, what a firm hold on my mind the project of going away had taken—of going even farther than my brother, of going everywhere upon the face of the earth.
A sea-faring life terrified me, and I relished21 the idea of it as little as ever. To a little being like me, so greatly attached to my home, bound to it by a thousand sweet ties, the very thought of it made my heart bleed. And besides, how could I break the news of such a decision to my parents, how give them so much pain and thus flagrantly outrage22 their wishes! But to renounce23 all my plans, always to remain in the same place, to be upon this earth, and to see nothing of it—what a squalid, disenchanting future! What was the use to live, what the good of growing up for that?
And in that empty parlor24 with its disordered chairs, one even overturned, and while I was still under the dark spell of our sad farewells, there beside my mother, leaning against her with eyes turned away and with soul overwhelmed with sorrow, I suddenly remembered the old log-book which I had read at sunset last spring at Limoise. The short sentences written down upon the old paper with yellow ink came slowly back to me one after the other with a charm as lulling25 and perfidious26 as that exercised by a magic incantation:
“Fair weather . . . beautiful sea . . . light breeze from the south-east . . . Shoals of dolphins . . . passing to larboard.”
And with a shudder27 of almost religious awe28, with pantheistic ecstasy29, my inward eye saw all about me the sad and vast blue splendor30 of the South Pacific Ocean.
A great calm, tinged31 with melancholy32, fell upon us after my brother's departure, and to me the days were monotonous33 in the extreme.
They had always thought of sending me to the Polytechnic34 school, but it had not been decided35 upon irrevocably. The wish to become a sailor, which had
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