that rock like a galley-slave to his ball; watching through twenty
years for shell-fish to earn a living, and sustained in his patience
by a single sentiment. How many hours wasted on a lonely shore! How
many hopes defeated by a change of weather! He was hanging there to a
granite rock, his arm extended like that of an Indian fakir, while his
father, sitting in their hovel, awaited, in silence and darkness, a
meal of the coarsest bread and shell-fish, if the sea permitted.

"Do you ever drink wine?" I asked.

"Three or four times a year," he replied.

"Well, you shall drink it to-day,--you and your father; and we will
send you some white bread."

"You are very kind, monsieur."

"We will give you your dinner if you will show us the way along the
shore to Batz, where we wish to see the tower which overlooks the bay
between Batz and Croisic."

"With pleasure," he said. "Go straight before you, along the path you
are now on, and I will follow you when I have put away my tackle."

We nodded consent, and he ran off joyfully toward the town. This
meeting maintained us in our previous mental condition; but it
lessened our gay lightheartedness.

"Poor man!" said Pauline, with that accent which removes from the
compassion of a woman all that is mortifying in human pity, "ought we