Before the sea, with its infinite distances, he lingered in ecstasy,
listening to the song of the waves, and gathering the marvellous shells
which the snow-white breakers left upon the beach, and whose unfamiliar
forms filled him with delight.

He was soon so accustomed to his new life in peaceful Ajaccio, whose
surroundings, decked in eternal verdure, are so captivating and so
beautiful, that in spite of a vague desire for change he now dreaded to
leave it. He never wearied of admiring and exalting the beautiful and
majestic aspects of his new home. How he longed to share his enthusiasm
with his father or his brother, as he rambled through the neighbouring
maquis!

"The infinite, glittering sea at my feet, the dreadful masses of granite
overhead, the white, dainty town seated beside the water, the endless
jungles of myrtle, which yield intoxicating perfumes, the wastes of
brushwood which the ploughshare has never turned, which cover the mountains
from base to summit; the fishing-boats that plough the gulf: all this forms
a prospect so magnificent, so striking, that whosoever has beheld it must
always long to see it again." (3/1.)

"What is their rock of Pierrelatte, that enormous block of stone which
overhangs the place where they dwell, a reef which rises from the surface
of the ancient sea of alluvium, compared with these blocks of uprooted
granite which lie upon the hillsides here?"

And what were the Aubrac hills which traversed his native country; what was
the Ventoux even, that famous Alp, "beside the peaks which rise about the
gulf of Ajaccio, always crowned with clouds and whitened with snow, even
when the soil of the plains is scorching and rings like a fired brick?"