"I approached that extraordinary monument. On its base, bathed by the foam of the ocean, were carved unknown characters: the moss and the saltpetre of the sea corroded the surface of the time-honoured bronze; the halcyon, perched upon the helmet of the colossus, uttered at intervals its plaintive note; shell-fish clung to the courser's flanks and mane of brass, and one's ear, when approached to its open nostrils, seemed to hear confused murmurs." * [Sidenote: Supper with the monks.] We were served with a good supper by the monks after our excursion, and we spent the night in drinking with our hosts. The next day, at noon, our provisions having been taken on board, we returned to the ship. The monks took charge of our letters for Europe. The vessel had been in danger through the rising of a stiff south-easterly wind. We heaved the anchor; but it was caught in the rocks, and we lost it, as we expected. We set sail: the wind continued to freshen, and we had soon passed the Azores. Fac pelagus me scire probes, quo carbasa laxo. "Muse, help me to show that I know the sea over which I spread my sails." Thus, six hundred years ago, wrote Guillaume-le-Breton[458], my fellow-countryman. Restored to the sea, I began anew the contemplation of my solitude; but across the ideal world of my dreams, stern monitors appeared to me: France and the events of reality. My lurking-place during the day, when I wished to avoid my fellow-passengers, was the main-top, to which I climbed nimbly amid the applause of the sailors. I there sat and commanded the waves. The vast expanse, doubly hung with azure, had the appearance of a canvas prepared to receive the future creations of a mighty painter. The colour of the water was like that of liquid glass. Long and steep undulations opened within their hollows vistas of the ocean deserts: those wavering landscapes made clear to my eyes the comparison drawn in the Scriptures of the earth reeling before the Lord, like a drunken man[459]. Sometimes one might have pronounced the space narrow and restricted, for want of a vanishing point; but if a wave happened to raise its crest, a billow to curve in imitation of a distant coast, a shoal of dog-fish to pass along the horizon, then one had a scale to measure by. The expanse was revealed still more when a mist, creeping to the ocean's surface, seemed to enlarge the very immensity. On descending from the eyrie of the mast, as when, in former days, ever reduced to a solitary existence, I climbed down from my nest in the willow-tree, I supped on a ship-biscuit, a little sugar, and a lemon; I then lay down, either wrapped in my cloak on deck, or in my cot below: I had but to stretch my arm to reach from my bed to my coffin. The wind compelled us to bear to the North, and we came alongside of the bank of Newfoundland. Floating icebergs roamed in the midst of a pale, cold mist.