I do not know.... I would have tried to follow her, but I could find no boat in the harbour.... I must wait, therefore, until another vessel passes....
That is curious.... It is like myself....
Yes, I too came to the island through a thick fog.... But I was shipwrecked....
When was that? And how?... Where do you come from, Joyzelle?...
One whom they had thought right to choose for me....
Ah, that is well!... I like that!... And my father, at the moment of his death, wished that I also should choose her whom he had chosen for me.... He had his reasons, very deep and serious reasons, it appears.... And, as he wished it and as he is no longer alive, I must obey him....
They can no longer be altered.... We must have pity, we must respect them....
No, the dead are horrible, if they want us to love those whom we do not love....
I said.... What did I say?... Perhaps I was too quick....
Joyzelle, your eyes are moist at the thought of the dead and belie your words....
No, it is not for them.... Perhaps I was harsh.... And yet, they are wrong.
Let us speak no more of the dead.... You have not told me how your shipwreck....
We lost our way in a thick fog.... A fog so thick that it filled our hands like white feathers.... The pilot mistook the course.... He thought he saw a beacon.... The ship struck upon a hidden reef.... But no one perished.... The waves bore me away; and then I saw the blue water glide before my eyes as though I were sinking in a stifling sky.... I went down and down.... Then some one caught hold of me and I lost consciousness....
He is an old man who wanders like a restless shade about this marble palace....
It is not the same thing!... You would not have suffered, nothing would have come to you.... I should have carried you on the crest of the waves.... Ah, I do not know how.... Like a cup full of precious pearls, of which not one must be touched by a shadow; like a flower of the dawn, from which we fear to shake a single dewdrop.... When I think of the dangers which you, so fair, so fragile, ran among the cruel rocks, in that old man's arms!... What he did was fine; he did the impossible.... But it was not enough.... How did you reach the shore at last?...
I awoke lying on the sands.... The old man was there. Then he had me carried to this palace....