CHAPTER IV.



I will now endeavor to explain the impression that the sea made upon
me at our first brief and melancholy encounter, which took place at
twilight upon the evening of my arrival at the Island.

Notwithstanding the fact that I could scarcely see it, it had so
remarkable an effect on me that in a single moment it was engraven upon
my memory forever. I feel a retrospective shudder run through me when my
spirit broods upon the recollection.

We had but newly arrived at this village near St. Ongeoise where my
parents had rented a fisherman's house for the bathing season. I knew
that we had come here for something called the sea, but I had had
no glimpse of it (a line of dunes hid it from me because of my short
stature), and I was extremely impatient to become acquainted with it;
therefore after dinner, as night was falling, I went alone to seek this
mysterious thing.

The air was sharp and biting, and unlike any I had experienced, and
from behind the hillocks of sand, along which the path led, there came a
faint but majestic noise. Everything affrighted me, the unfamiliar way,
the twilight falling from the overcast sky, and the loneliness of this
part of the village. But inspired by one of those great and sudden
resolutions, that come sometimes to the most timid, I went forward with
a firm step.