Sad at heart with sympathy, we reached the gulf. Between the bold rocks, the pools left by the sea contained some little creatures that had not been able to accompany the retreating tide. Some shelled creatures were there, self-concentrated and suffering from want of water, and amongst them, unshelled, unsheltered, lay the living parasol, that for some, anything, rather than good reason, we call the _Medusa_. Why has that name of terror been given to a creature so charming? Never before had my attention been attracted to those wrecked beauties, which we so often see high and dry upon the sea shore at low ebb tide. This especial one was small, not larger than my hand, but singularly beautiful, in its delicate colors, passing so lightly from tint to tint. It was of an opal whiteness, into which passed, as in a light cloud, a crown of the most delicate lilac. The wind had turned it over, so that its lilac filaments floated above, while the umbrella, that is to say, its proper body, lay upon the rock. Much bruised in that tender body, it was also wounded and mutilated in its fine filaments, or hairs, which are its sensitive organs of respiration, absorption, and even love. And the whole creature thus thrown upside down was receiving in full force the rays of the Provençal sun, severe in its first awakening and rendered still more severe by the dryness of the occasional gusts of the south-westerly winds, the _Mistral_ of our Provençal coasts. The transparent creature was thus doubly pierced, doubly tormented, accustomed as it was to the caressing sea, and unprovided with the resisting epidermis of land animals. Close to her dried up lagune were other lagunes still full of water, and communicating with the sea. Within a few paces of her, then, was safety, but for her who had no organs of locomotion, excepting her undulating hairs, it was impossible to traverse even that petty distance, and it seemed that remaining under that fierce sun and exposed to the arid blasts of that wind she very speedily must faint, die, and be actually dissolved.