"Allow me, madame, to tell you that I am certain of the contrary."
She shook her head.
"Seeing," I continued, "that we are not going to have luncheon between-decks but here on deck."
"You asked the captain to do that!" she exclaimed, with as much fervour as though I had realised a desire which she had not even dared to let herself dwell upon.
"Why, yes, I did!" I answered, laughing.
"Oh!" she said, turning to her husband, "how good monsieur is, dear!"
"Upon my word," he said, "you should be most grateful to him; I had not even thought of such a thing."
How is it that even the most devotedly loving husbands, even those just married, never think of things that strangers do? I leave this reflection to the wisdom of any psychologists who may chance to peruse this book.
The table was set on deck; the young woman ate little, but she did not lose sight for an instant of the two banks of the Loire, which were now growing wider and wider apart. As we approached the sea the colour of the water changed from yellow to greenish; then waves began to foam on its surface. When we had doubled Saint-Nazaire, we found ourselves in the angle of a kind of gigantic V, which, at its widest end, displayed to our gaze the limitless horizon of the sea. This was the first time the young woman had seen the sea she was to cross; it was evident that the vision caused her profound terror. The sea was rough without being actually stormy; but it was not its roughness that impressed the melancholy voyager, nor was it the white-crested waves which made her turn pale—it was the idea of its infinity, the feeling of immensity of space that the sight of the ocean always gives. About two o'clock in the afternoon we reached the open sea. Then, on our left lay the isle of Noirmontiers (nigrum monasteriuni), which derives its name from a Benedictine monastery, founded there in the seventh century by Saint Philibert, and destroyed in the ninth century by those Normans whose appearance saddened the last years of Charlemagne; on the right lay Belle-Ile, the isle of Fouquet, which was to give its name later to the heroine of one of my comedies; and, later again, was to become the scene of action of my triple epic The Musketeers, and to provide a tomb worthy of my poor friend Porthos. At the time of which I am writing, these various names struck my ears indifferently; but they stayed in my memory none the less, and were to reappear one day decked in all the framework of the dream-fancies of my imagination; floating isles of Delos, which will stop in more or less advanced positions in the realms of the future. In front of us stretched the sea, with its indented crests, merging towards the horizon in a sky dark with clouds, in which the sun was beginning to enshroud itself. We were nearly three leagues from harbour, off the reef called les Pitiers; the bad channels were passed, the wind was south-south-west, and freshening. The pilot announced that his task was done, that he handed over the command to the captain, and that he should return to land. I must say I looked at the means of descent from the ship to the skiff with some disquietude. It was nothing more than a rope-ladder fixed to the round sides of the ship. And, moreover, the ship was making its seven knots an hour. For a moment I wished I need not get off before reaching Guadeloupe. Fortunately, the captain understood what was going on in my mind, and came to the conclusion that a short delay of ten minutes was of no account in a voyage of six weeks.
"Come," he said to me, "go and pay your adieux whilst I lay to the ship."