Obviously it was a vain hope in 187- to see the ladies of a royal
household walk in chequered sunshine, with baskets of linen on
their heads, to the banks of a clear stream overhung by the starry
fronds of palm-trees. It was a vain hope. If I did not ask myself
whether, limited by such discouraging impossibilities, life were
still worth living, it was only because I had then before me
several other pressing questions, some of which have remained
unanswered to this day. The resonant, laughing voices of these
gorgeous maidens scared away the multitude of humming-birds, whose
delicate wings wreathed with the mist of their vibration the tops
of flowering bushes.

No, they were not princesses. Their unrestrained laughter filling
the hot, fern-clad ravine had a soulless limpidity, as of wild,
inhuman dwellers in tropical woodlands. Following the example of
certain prudent travellers, I withdrew unseen--and returned, not
much wiser, to the Mediterranean, the sea of classic adventures.



XL.



It was written that there, in the nursery of our navigating
ancestors, I should learn to walk in the ways of my craft and grow
in the love of the sea, blind as young love often is, but absorbing
and disinterested as all true love must be. I demanded nothing
from it--not even adventure. In this I showed, perhaps, more
intuitive wisdom than high self-denial. No adventure ever came to