the
steam-vessel following it. One proposing, the other executing. Where was
she now, his Durande, that mistress of the seas, that queen who had made
him a king? To have been so long the man of ideas in his own country,
the man of success, the man who revolutionised navigation; and then to
have to give up all, to abdicate! To cease to exist, to become a
bye-word, an empty bag which once was full. To belong to the past, after
having so long represented the future. To come down to be an object of
pity to fools, to witness the triumph of routine, obstinacy,
conservatism, selfishness, ignorance. To see the old barbarous sailing
cutters crawling to and fro upon the sea: the outworn old-world
prejudices young again; to have wasted a whole life; to have been a
light, and to suffer this eclipse. Ah! what a sight it was upon the
waves, that noble funnel, that prodigious cylinder, that pillar with its
capital of smoke, that column grander than any in the Place Vendome, for
on that there was only a man, while on this stood Progress. The ocean
was subdued; it was certainty upon the open sea. And had all this been
witnessed in that little island, in that little harbour, in that little
town of St. Sampson? Yes; it had been witnessed. And could it be that,
having seen it, all had vanished to be seen no more.

All this series of regrets tortured Lethierry. There is such a thing as
a mental sobbing. Never, perhaps, had he felt his misfortune more
bitterly. A certain numbness follows this acute suffering. Under the
weight of his sorrow he gradually dosed.

For about two hours he remained in this state, feverish, sleeping a
little, meditating much. Such torpors are accompanied by an obscure
labour of the brain, which is inexpressibly wearying. Towards the middle
of the night, about midnight, a little before or a little after, he
shook off his lethargy. He aroused, and opened his eyes. His window was
directly in front of his hammock. He saw something extraordinary.

A form was before the window; a marvellous form. It was the funnel of a
steam-vessel.

Mess Lethierry started, and sat upright in his bed. The hammock
oscillated like a swing in a tempest. Lethierry stared. A vision filled
the window-frame. There was the harbour flooded with the light of the
moon, and against that glitter, quite close to his house, stood forth,
tall, round, and black, a magnificent object.

The funnel of a steam-vessel was there.

Lethierry sprang out of