masterpiece: won by his devotion a new step
in civilisation. The step was lost; the masterpiece destroyed. To live a
few vacant years longer! where would be the good? Henceforth nothing was
left for him to do. At his age men do not begin life anew. Besides, he
was ruined. Poor old man!

Deruchette, sitting near him on a chair and weeping, held one of Mess
Lethierry's hands in hers. Her hands were joined: his hand was clenched
fast. It was the sign of the shade of difference in their two sorrows.
In joined hands there is still some token of hope, in the clenched fist
none.

Mess Lethierry gave up his arm to her, and let her do with it what she
pleased. He was passive. Struck down by a thunderbolt, he had scarcely a
spark of life left within him.

There is a degree of overwhelmment which abstracts the mind entirely
from its fellowship with man. The forms which come and go within your
room become confused and indistinct. They pass by, even touch you, but
never really come near you. You are far away; inaccessible to them, as
they to you. The intensities of joy and despair differ in this. In
despair, we take cognisance of the world only as something dim and afar
off: we are insensible to the things before our eyes; we lose the
feeling of our own existence. It is in vain, at such times, that we are
flesh and blood; our consciousness of life is none the more real: we are
become, even to ourselves, nothing but a dream.

Mess Lethierry's gaze indicated that he had reached this state of
absorption.

The various groups were whispering together. They exchanged information
as far as they had gathered it. This was the substance of their news.

The Durande had been wrecked the day before in the fog on the Douvres,
about an hour before sunset. With the exception of the captain, who
refused to leave his vessel, the crew and passengers had all escaped in
the long-boat. A squall from the south-west springing up as the fog had
cleared, had almost wrecked them a second time, and had carried them out
to sea beyond Guernsey. In the night they had had the good fortune to
meet with the _Cashmere_, which had taken them aboard and landed them at
St. Peter's Port. The disaster was entirely the fault of the steersman
Tangrouille, who was in prison. Clubin had behaved nobly.

The pilots, who had mustered in great force, pronounced the words "The
Douvres" with a peculiar emphasis. "A dreary half-way house that," said
one.

A compass and a