ous electric forces extracted from huge
waterfalls varying in breadth, cities vomited from the desert in a few
weeks, all the marvels of an adolescent world that desires to realize
whatever its youthful imagination may conceive. He was the demi-urge of
this little floating world: he disposed of joy and love as the spirit
moved him.

In the scorching evenings around the equator, it was enough for him to
give an order to rouse things and beings from their brutish drowsiness.
"Let the music begin, and refreshments be served." And in a few moments
dancers would be revolving the whole length of the deck, and smiling
lips and eyes would become brilliantly alight with illusion and desire.
Behind him, his praises were always being sounded. The matrons found
him very distinguished. "It is plain to be seen that he is an
exceptional person." Stewards and crew circulated exaggerated accounts
of his riches and his studies. Some young girls sailing for Europe with
imaginations seething with romance were very much aghast to learn that
the hero was married and had a son. The solitary ladies stretched out
on a _chaise-longue,_ book in hand, upon seeing him would arrange the
corolla of their petticoats, hiding their legs with so much
precipitation that it always left them more uncovered; then fixing upon
him a languishing glance, they would begin a dialogue always in the
same way.

"How is it that any one so young as you has already become a
captain?..."

Ah, the misery of it!... He who had gallantly passed many years
cruising from one extreme of the Atlantic to the other with a rich,
gay, perfumed world, at times resisting feminine caprice through mere
prudence, yielding at others with the secrecy of a discreet sailor, now
found himself with no other admirers than the mediocre tribe of the
Blanes, with no other hallucinations than those which his cousin the
manufacturer might suggest, when waxing enthusiastic because the great
apostles of politics were taking a certain interest in the captain.

Every morning, on awaking, his taste now received a rude shock. The
first thing that he contemplated was a room "without personality," a
dwelling that was not characteristic of him in any way, arranged by the
maids with excessive cleanliness and a lack of logic that was
constantly changing the situation of his things.

He recalled with longing his compact and well-ordered stateroom where
there was not a piece of furniture that could escape