around us shall blossom, and each morning our dwelling shall be filled
with nosegays--nosegays such as you have never dreamed of."

Yves now began to take an interest in these plans for my future
household; indeed, he would have listened with as much confidence if I
had expressed the intention of taking temporary vows in some monastery of
this new country, or of marrying some island queen and shutting myself up
with her in a house built of jade, in the middle of an enchanted lake.

I had quite made up my mind to carry out the scheme I had unfolded to
him. Yes, led on by ennui and solitude, I had gradually arrived at
dreaming of and looking forward to such a marriage. And then, above all,
to live for awhile on land, in some shady nook, amid trees and flowers!
How tempting it sounded after the long months we had been wasting at the
Pescadores (hot and arid islands, devoid of freshness, woods, or
streamlets, full of faint odors of China and of death).

We had made great way in latitude since our vessel had quitted that
Chinese furnace, and the constellations in the sky had undergone a series
of rapid changes; the Southern Cross had disappeared at the same time as
the other austral stars; and the Great Bear, rising on the horizon, was
almost on as high a level as it is in the sky above France. The evening
breeze soothed and revived us, bringing back to us the memory of our
summer-night watches on the coast of Brittany.

What a distance we were, however, from those familiar coasts! What a
tremendous distance!