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elements of happiness has he ever met in this miserable island? When
he dreamed of creating resources for a long and peaceful future, he
lied to himself. A life favored by leisure would but crush him the
oftener beneath the weight of thought, and it is thought which is
killing him, the thought of isolation!

What import to him the beautiful sights spread out before his eyes?
The vast extent of sky and earth has repeated to him each day that he
is lost, forgotten on an obscure point of the globe. The sunrises and
sunsets, with their magic aspects, this luxuriant tropical vegetation,
the magnificent and picturesque scenery of his island, awaken in him
only a feeling of restraint, an uneasiness which he cannot define.
Perhaps the emotions, so sweet to all, are painful to him only because
he cannot communicate them, share them with another. It is not the
noisy life of cities which he asks, not even that of the shore. But,
at least, a companion, a being to reply to his voice, to be associated
with his joys, his sorrows. Marimonda! No, he recognizes it now!
Marimonda could amuse him, but was not sufficient; she inhabited with
him only the exterior world, she communicated with him only by things
visible and palpable; her affection for her master, her gentleness,
her admirable instinct, sometimes succeeded in lessening the distance
which separated their two natures, but did not wholly fill up the
interval.

He had exaggerated the intelligence which, besides, increased at the
expense of her strength, as with all monkeys; for God has not willed
that an animal should approximate too closely to man; he had overrated
the sense of her acts, because he needed near him a thinking and
acting being; but with her, confidences, plans, hopes, communication,
the exchange of all those intimate and mysterious thoughts which are
the life of the soul, were they possible? Even her eyes did not see
like his own; admiration was forbidden to her; admiration, that
precious faculty, which exists only for man,--and which becomes
extinct by isolation.

How many others become extinct also!

Self-love, a just self-esteem, that powerful lever which sustains us,
which elevates us, which compels us to respect in ourselves that
nobility of race which we derive from God, what becomes of it in
solitude? For Selkirk, vanity itself has lost its power to stimulate.
Formerly, when in the presence of his comrades at St. Andrew or of the
royal fleet, he had s