“There lies the last descendant of the Medianas,” said Pepé, with a sigh.
“What care I for the Medianas and their powerful race?” replied the Canadian. “I know but Fabian. When I saved him, and attached myself to him as though he had been my own, did I ask about his ancestors?”
“You will wake him if you talk so loud,” said Pepé; “your voice roars like a cataract.”
“Why are you always recalling to me things that I do not wish to know, or rather wish to forget. I know that some years in the desert will accustom him—”
“You deceive yourself strangely, Bois-Rose, if you imagine that with the prospects that await him in Spain, and the rights that he can claim, this young man will consent to pass his whole life in the desert. It is good for us, but not for him.”
“What! is not the desert preferable to cities?” cried the old sailor, who vainly tried to conceal from himself that Pepé was right. “I undertake to make him prefer a wandering life to a settled one. Is it not for movement, for fighting, and for the powerful emotions of the desert that man is born?”
“Certainly,” said Pepé, gravely, “and that is just why the towns are deserted and the deserts peopled!”
“Do not jest, Pepé; I am speaking of serious things. While I leave Fabian free to follow his own inclinations, I shall make him love this captivating life. Is not this short sleep, snatched hastily between two dangers, preferable to what one tastes after a day of idle security in the towns. You yourself, Pepé—would you wish to return to your own country, since you have known the charms of a wandering life?”
“There is between the heir of the Medianas,” replied Pepé, “and the old coast-guard man a great difference. To him will come a fine property, a great name, and a beautiful Gothic castle with towers like the cathedral at Burgos; while I should be sent to fish for mackerel at Ceuta—which is the most execrable life I know of and which I should have but one chance of escaping from—that of waking some fine morning, at Tunis or Tetuan, as a slave to our neighbours the Moors. I have here, it is true, the daily chance of being scalped or burnt alive by the Indians. Still the town is worse for me—but for Don Fabian—”
“Fabian has always lived in solitude, and will, I trust, prefer the calm of the desert to the tumult of cities. How solemn and silent is all around us! See here!” and he pointed to Fabian, “how the child sleeps, softly lulled by the murmur of the waters, and by the breeze in the willows. Look there, in the horizon at those fogs just coloured by the sun, and that boundless space where man wanders in his primitive liberty, like the birds in the air!”