His pension! That is ever the sailor's dream. It begins in early youth, as if the present life were only a time of trial. To take his pension, at about forty; after having traversed the world from pole to pole, to possess a little plot of earth of his own, to live there very soberly and to leave it no more; to become someone of standing in his village, in his parish church--a churchwarden after having been a sea-rover; the devil turned monk and a very peaceful one. . . . How many of them are mown down before they reach it, this more peaceful hour of ripe age? And yet, if you ask them, they are all thinking of it. This _sure method_ which Yves had discovered for keeping sober had succeeded very well; on board he was the exemplary sailor he had always been, and, on shore, we were never apart. Since that miserable day which began the year 1881, the relations between us had completely changed, and I treated him now in every respect as a brother. On board this _Sèvre_, a very small boat, we officers lived in a very cordial intimacy. Yves was now of our band. At the theatre, in our box; sharing our enterprises which for the most part were insignificant enough. Rather shy at first, refusing, slipping away, he had ended by accepting the position, because he felt that he was loved by us all. And I hoped by this new and perhaps unusual means to attach him to me as much as possible, and to raise him out of his past life and win him from his former friends. That thing which it is usual to call education, that kind of polish which is applied thickly enough, it is true, on so many others, was entirely wanting in my brother Yves; but he had naturally a kind of tact, a delicacy much rarer, which cannot be assumed. When he was in our company, he kept himself always so well in his place, that in the end he himself began to feel at ease. He spoke very little, and never to say those banal things which everybody says. And when he put off his sailor's clothes and dressed himself in a well-fitting grey suit with grey suede gloves to match, then, though preserving still his careless sea-rover's carriage, his high-held head and his bronzed skin, he had all at once quite a distinguished air. It used to amuse us to take him with us and present him to smart people upon whom his silence and bearing imposed and who found him rather haughty. And it was comical, next day, to see him once more a sailor, as good a topman as before. Little Pierre and I, then, were in the woods of Toulven, looking for flowers during the family council. We found a great many, pale yellow primroses, violet periwinkles, blue borage, and even red silenes, the first of the spring. Little Pierre gathered as many as he could, in a state of great excitement, not knowing which way to run, panting hard, as if in the throes of a very important work; he brought them to me very eagerly in little handfuls, very badly picked, half-crushed in his little fingers, and too short in the stalk.