When we had shipped stores and replaced the anchor which we had lost at Graciosa, we left Saint-Pierre. Sailing south before the wind, we reached the latitude of 38°. The calm delayed us at a short distance from the coasts of Maryland and Virginia. The misty sky of the northerly regions had been succeeded by the clearest weather; the land was not in sight, but the odour of the pine-forests was wafted to our nostrils. The dawn and the early morning, the rising and setting sun, the twilight and the night were alike admirable. I was never satisfied with gazing at Venus, whose rays seemed to envelop me like the tresses of my sylph of former days. One day I was reading in the captain's room; the bell struck for prayers; I went and mingled my prayers with those of my companions. The officers and passengers filled the quarter-deck; the chaplain, book in hand, stood a little before them, near the helm; the sailors were crowded promiscuously on deck; we stood with our faces turned towards the ship's bows. All sails were furled. The disk of the sun, preparing to plunge into the sea, appeared through the rigging of the vessel in the midst of the boundless space: it was as though, with the rocking of the poop, the radiant luminary at each moment changed its horizon. When I drew this picture, which you can see in its entirety in the _Génie du Christianisme_[463], my religious sentiments were in harmony with the scene; but alas, when I was present at it in person, I had not yet put off the old man: it was not God alone that I contemplated in the waves, in all the magnificence of His works. I beheld an unknown woman and the miracles worked by her smile; the beauties of the heavens seemed to open out at her breath; I would have bartered Eternity for one of her caresses. I pictured her to myself throbbing behind the veil of the universe which hid her from my gaze. Ah, why was it not in my power to tear aside that curtain to press the idealized woman to my heart, to be consumed upon her breast with that love which was the source of my inspirations, of my despair, and of my life! While I abandoned myself to these impulses so well suited to my future career as a _coureur des bois_, an accident occurred which very nearly put an end to my plans and to my dreams.