"It cannot be…. It is all ended. It is ended forever!…"
She said this repeatedly before returning to her hotel. And he thought of it during all the wakeful night between agonizing attacks of nightmare. When the morning was well advanced the bugles of the bersaglieri awakened him from a heavy sleep.
He paid his bill in the manager's office and gave a last tip to the porter, telling him that a few hours later a man from the ship would come for his baggage.
He was happy, with the forced happiness of one obliged to accommodate himself to circumstances. He congratulated himself upon his liberty as though he had gained this liberty of his own free will and it had not been imposed upon him by her scorn. Since the memory of the preceding day pained him, putting him in a ridiculous and gross light, it was better not to recall the past.
He stopped in the street to take a last look at the hotel. "Adieu, accursed albergo!… Never will I see you again. Would that you might burn down with all your occupants!"
Upon treading the deck of the Mare Nostrum, his enforced satisfaction became immeasurably increased. Here only could he live far from the complications and illusions of terrestrial life.
All those aboard who in previous weeks had feared the arrival of the ill-humored captain, now smiled as though they saw the sun coming out after a tempest. He distributed kindly words and affectionate grasps of the hand. The repairs were going to be finished the following day…. Very good! He was entirely content. Soon they would be on the sea again.
In the galley he greeted Uncle Caragol…. That man was a philosopher. All the women in the world were not in his estimation worth a good dish of rice. Ah, the great man!… He surely was going to live to be a hundred! And the cook flattered by such praises, whose origin he did not happen to comprehend, responded as always,—"That is so, my captain."
Toni, silent, disciplined and familiar, inspired him with no less admiration. His life was an upright life, firm and plain, as the road of duty. When the young officials used to talk in his presence of boisterous suppers on shore with women from distant countries, the pilot had always shrugged his shoulders. "Money and pleasure ought to be kept for the home," he would say sententiously.
Ferragut had laughed many times at the virtue of his mate who, timid and torpid, used to pass over a great part of the planet without permitting himself any distraction whatever, but would awake with an overpowering tension whenever the chances of their voyage brought him the opportunity of a few days' stay in his home in the Marina.