Mais, s'il aimait tant les plaisirs,
Les chants joyeux, la vie en rose,
Le plus ardent de ses désirs,
Pour lui la plus heureuse chose,
Fut toujours que l'humanité
Regnât au sein de son Royaume;
De même que l'Egalité
Sous son modeste toit de chaume.


Hallman, with whom I journeyed on the Noa-Noa, dropped into the Cercle
Bougainville occasionally, but he was ordinarily too much occupied with
his schemes of trade. Besides, he had only one absorbing vice other
than business, and with merely wine and song to be found at the club,
Hallman went there but seldom, and only to talk about pearl-shell,
copra, and the profits of schooner voyages. However, through him
I met another group who spoke English, and who were not of Latin
blood. They were Llewellyn, an islander--Welsh and Tahitian; Landers,
a New Zealander; Pincher, an Englishman; David, McHenry, and Brown,
Americans; Count Polonsky, the Russo-Frenchman who was fined a franc;
and several captains of vessels who sailed between Tahiti and the
Pacific coast of the United States or in these latitudes.

The Noa-Noa was overdue from New Zealand, by way of Raratonga, and her
tardiness was the chief subject of conversation at our first meeting. A
hundred times a day was the semaphore on the hill spied at for the
signal of the Noa-Noa's sighting. High up on the expansive green slope
which rises a few hundred feet behind the Tiare Hotel is a white pole,
and on this are hung various objects which tell the people of Papeete