imaginary voyages.

Mme. de Maupassant, who had guided her son's early reading, and had
gazed with him at the sublime spectacle of nature, put off as long as
possible the hour of separation. One day, however, she had to take the
child to the little seminary at Yvetot. Later, he became a student at
the college at Rouen, and became a literary correspondent of Louis
Bouilhet. It was at the latter's house on those Sundays in winter when
the Norman rain drowned the sound of the bells and dashed against the
window panes that the school boy learned to write poetry.

Vacation took the rhetorician back to the north of Normandy. Now it
was shooting at Saint Julien-l'Hospitalier, across fields, bogs, and
through the woods. From that time on he sealed his pact with the
earth, and those "deep and delicate roots" which attached him to his
native soil began to grow. It was of Normandy, broad, fresh and
virile, that he would presently demand his inspiration, fervent and
eager as a boy's love; it was in her that he would take refuge when,
weary of life, he would implore a truce, or when he simply wished to
work and revive his energies in old-time joys. It was at this time
that was born in him that voluptuous love of the sea, which in later
days could alone withdraw him from the world, calm him, console him.

In 1870 he lived in the country, then he came to Paris to live; for,
the family fortunes having dwindled, he had to look for a position.
For several years he was a clerk in the Ministry of Marine, where he
turned over musty papers, in the uninteresting company of the clerks
of the admiralty.

Then he went into the department of Public Instruction, where