uncommon thing for naval men to combine a love of the sea with a love of
poetry. Fred's verses were not good, but they were full of dejection. The
poor fellow compared Raoul Wermant to Faust, and himself to Siebel. He
spoke of

The youth whose eyes were brimming with salt tears,
Whose heart was troubled by a thousand fears,
Poor slighted lover!-since in his heavy heart
All his illusions perish and depart.

Again, he wrote of Siebel:

O Siebel!--thine is but the common fate!
They told thee Fortune upon youth would wait;
'Tis false when love's in question-and you may--

Here he enumerated all the proofs of tenderness possible for a woman to
give her lover, and then he added:

You may know all, poor Siebel!--all, some day,
When weary of this life and all its dreams,
You learn to know it is not what it seems;
When there is nothing that can cheer you more,
All that remains is fondly to adore!

And after trying in vain to find a rhyme for lover, he cried:

Oh! tell me--if one grief exceeds another
Is not this worst, to feel mere friendship moves
To cruel kindness the dear girl he loves?

Fred's mother surprised him one night while he was watering with his
tears the ink he was putting to so sorry a use. She had been aware that
he sat up late at night--his sleeplessness was not the insomnia of
genius--for she had seen the glare of light from his little lamp burning
later than the usual bedtime of the chateau, in one of the turret
chambers at Lizerolles.

In vain Fred denied that he was doing anything, in vain he tried to put
his papers out of sight; his mother was so persuasive that at last he
owned everything to her, and in addition to the comfort he derived from
his confession, he gained a certain satisfaction to his 'amour-propre',
for Madame d'Argy thought the verses beautiful. A mother's geese are
always swans. But it was only when she said, "I don't see why you should
not marry your Jacqueline--such a thing is not by any means impossible,"
and promised to do all in her power to insure his happiness, that Fred
felt how dearly he loved his mother. Oh, a thousand times more than he
had ever supposed he loved her! However, he had not yet done with the
agonies that lie in wait for lovers.

Madame de Monredon arrived one day at the Hotel de la Plage, accompanied
by her granddaughter, whom she had