Not yet, not yet. A creation must rise above yours, a thing which you do not fear. That rival is not the tempest, you would brave it; nor the fresh water, you would build beside it. It is not even the earth, which by degrees is invading your constructions. What, then, is that other power? In yourself, in Polypes, there is an ambition to cease to be one. In your Republic there is a certain creature who in constant anxiety and yearning, repeats that the perfection of this vegetating existence is not real life. It constantly dreams of a freer and more expanded life, navigating hither and thither, penetrating and viewing the unknown world even at the hazard of shipwreck;--that thing is--the Soul. CHAPTER VI. DAUGHTER OF THE SEAS. I passed the early part of 1858 in the pleasant little town of Hyères which, from afar, gazes down on the sea, the islets and the peninsula by which its coast is sheltered. The sea, seen from this distance, is even more potently seductive than when one is on its very shore. The paths leading to it, whether we pass between gardens with their hedges of jasmin and myrtle, or, ascending some little, pass through the olive grounds and a little wood of pines and laurels, are exceedingly tempting. The wood by no means hinders us from catching, now and then, a glance of the bright sea. The place is, by no means unjustly, called Fair-Coast. Often in the fine days of its gentle winters we met there a most interesting invalid, a young foreign princess who had come thither from a distance of five hundred leagues, in the hope of adding some span to her fading and failing life. That life, short as it was, had been a hard and sad one. Scarcely had she become a glad wife when she found herself rudely threatened by Death. And now she dragged on from day to day of suffering, supported and most tenderly treated by him who lived only for her and hoped not to survive her. If wishes and prayers could have preserved her she would still live; for all prayed for her, especially the poor. But spring came, and bloomed and ended, and on one of those April days whose genial influence revives every thing we saw the two shadows pass, pale as the wandering Elysian spectres of Virgil.