hess failed rapidly, for she was
then unable to see her son, forbidden as he was by her compact with his
father to approach the house. The sorrow of the youth was equal to that
of the mother. Inspired by the genius of repressed feeling, Etienne
created a mystical language by which to communicate with his mother. He
studied the resources of his voice like an opera-singer, and often he
came beneath her windows to let her hear his melodiously melancholy
voice, when Beauvouloir by a sign informed him she was alone. Formerly,
as a babe, he had consoled his mother with his smiles, now, become a
poet, he caressed her with his melodies.

"Those songs give me life," said the duchess to Beauvouloir, inhaling
the air that Etienne's voice made living.

At length the day came when the poor son's mourning began. Already he
had felt the mysterious correspondences between his emotions and the
movements of the ocean. The divining of the thoughts of matter, a power
with which his occult knowledge had invested him, made this phenomenon
more eloquent to him than to all others. During the fatal night when he
was taken to see his mother for the last time, the ocean was agitated by
movements that to him were full of meaning. The heaving waters seemed to
show that the sea was working intestinally; the swelling waves rolled in
and spent themselves with lugubrious noises like the howling of a dog in
distress. Unconsciously, Etienne found himself saying:--

"What does it want of me? It quivers and moans like a living creature.
My mother has often told me that the ocean was in horrible convulsions
on the night when I was born. Something is about to happen to me."

This thought kept him standing before his window with his eyes sometimes
on his mother's windows where a faint light trembled, sometimes on the
ocean which continued to moan. Suddenly Beauvouloir knocked on the door
of his room, opened it, and showed on his saddened face the reflection
of some new misfortune.

"Monseigneur," he said, "Madame la duchesse is in so sad a state that
she wishes to see you. All precautions are taken that no harm shall
happen to you in the castle; but we must be prudent; to see her you will
have to pass through the room of Monseigneur the duke, the room where
you were born."

These words brought the tears to Etienne's eyes, and he said:--

"The Ocean _did_ speak to me!"

Mechanically he allowed himself to be led towards the door of the tower
which gave