The most debased and unfortunate of wretches possibly have some friends whom they love or by whom they are beloved. And this miserable Victoire had his mother, who doted on him, and a fellow voyager on whom he doted. The name of the last mentioned was Julius Luxmore. How he had first become acquainted with this young man it is not necessary now to relate. It is sufficient to say that he had known him intimately for about two years. From the moment of Victoire L’Orient’s embarkation on board the Mercury, his spirits had suffered a reaction into gloom and apathy, to which those of his volatile nation are frequently subject. And this despondency increased with every league of the voyage, until, when half across the Atlantic ocean, it amounted to absolute despair. He passed much of the day in leaning over the bulwarks of the vessel, gazing gloomily into the sea, and sometimes muttering to himself: “I shall never see Etoile! I shall never see Etoile!” One afternoon he was thus standing in the stern of the vessel with his elbow resting on the taffrail, his chin leaning upon his hand, and his eyes fixed intently upon the foaming sea in the wake of the vessel, when his friend came up to his side, touching his elbow, and said, cheerily: “Come, come, shipmate! Do you think we are near a sunken reef? And are you making leaden plummets of your eyeballs to take the soundings? What are you gazing at?” “_Mon tombeau_,” answered the Frenchman, gloomily. “‘These things must not be thought on after these ways so, it will make us mad,’ as the tender-hearted Lady Macbeth says.” “_Mais, mon Dieu!_ I shall never see Etoile! I shall never see Etoile!” “‘Consider it not so deeply!’ I think you have every thing to hope. You must not judge her inclinations by the action of her counsel. Reflect; she has fled from Lord Montressor, not from you!” “Grand heaven! who talks of her? It is not of Estelle, my demon of a wife, that I speak!” exclaimed Victoire, shrugging his shoulders. “Of whom then? Etoile—Etoile—I never heard the name. Has Monsieur Victoire perhaps _consoled_ himself for the absence of Madame Estelle?” inquired Luxmore in a tone of raillery. “Ah! no, no,” replied the Frenchman in the same mournful tone—“I speak of my child—my daughter—my pretty little Etoile!” “Your child!” exclaimed Luxmore in astonishment. “Yes, my friend. Mon Dieu! Yes, my daughter, my dear Etoile!” “But you never told me you had a child?” “But yes, mon Dieu! I have! I did from all the fact conceal. Listen you. You shall hear. That woman of perdition, Estelle, had a child—a daughter?” “Is it possible! and that child lives?” “Yes, yes! my beautiful Etoile! My princess of the Isle! My star of the sea!” exclaimed the Frenchman, with real or feigned enthusiasm. “You astonish me. And her mother——?” “Does not know she lives. Attend you. I will, from you, nothing hide. She has an uncle—the King of the isle.” “Eh? What?” exclaimed the other in perplexity.