The singular instinct of contradiction peculiar to youth saved him from many dangers. The very facility with which he could, scarcely adolescent, have yielded to every excess, the odious temptations they dared set before him, sufficed to preserve him from precocious dissipations.
In a word, the natural exaltation of his sentiments urged him to cultivate the sweet, pure, and noble emotions from which they endeavoured to remove him, but unfortunately the fatal influence of Pog had not been absolutely vain. The ardent character of Erebus retained a sad evidence of the perversity of his education.
If in some moments he had passionate yearnings toward good, if he struggled against the detestable counsels of his tutor, the habit of a warlike and adventurous life which he had led from the age of twelve or thirteen years, the impetuosity of his character, and the transport of his passions, often dragged him into grievous excess. From his earliest youth, Pog had taken him along in the various incursions into the shore, and the courage and natural daring of Erebus had been valiantly exhibited in several combats.
Instructed by experience and by practice, he had learned with great facility the avocation of sailor and mariner, and the constant aim of Pog had been to inculcate in him a profound and relentless hatred of the chevaliers of Malta, who were represented to him as the murderers of his family, and the secret of this murder Pog had faithfully promised to reveal to him some day.
Yet nothing was more false. Pog had no knowledge of the parents of the child, left an orphan at such an early age, but he wished to perpetuate in his victim his own hatred of the chevaliers of religion.
Erebus renewed his vows, and an ardent desire for vengeance developed in his young soul against the soldiers of Christ, whom he believed to be the murderers of his family. In other respects, Erebus gave less satisfaction to Pog. Cruelty in cold blood was revolting to him, and sometimes he was deeply moved at the sight of human suffering. Pog had often observed that irony and sarcasm were a powerful and infallible arm in combating the natural nobility of the youth’s character, and by comparing him to a clergyman, or a tonsured Christian, or accusing him of weakness and cowardice, he often provoked the unhappy boy to culpable acts.
The scene in the rocks of Ollioules, where Erebus saw Reine for the first time, is a striking proof of that constant struggle between his natural inclinations and the bad passions that Pog excited in his heart.
The first impulse of Erebus was to hasten to the rescue of Raimond V. and to respond with almost filial veneration to the old man’s outburst of gratitude,—in fact, to believe himself rewarded for his generous conduct by the satisfaction of his conscience and the grateful looks of the young girl; but a bitter sarcasm from Pog, a coarse jest from Trimalcyon, changed these noble emotions into sensual desire and a profound disdain for the courageous action by which he had just honoured himself.
Yet, in spite of the cynical bantering of the two pirates, the enchanting beauty of Reine made a profound impression upon Erebus.
He had never loved, his heart had never taken part in the coarse pleasures which he had sought among the slaves that the hazard of war had thrown into his hands.