CHAPTER V.
THE PASSAGE.
It is a long voyage from Havre to Chili. The man accustomed to thethousand agitations and the intoxicating whirlwind of the atmosphere ofParis, necessarily finds the life on shipboard, the calm and regularlife, insipid and monotonous. It is certainly tedious to remain monthstogether in a vessel, confined to a cabin a few feet square, withoutair and without sun, almost without light, and to have no walk but thenarrow deck of the ship, no horizon but the rolling or the tranquilsea--at all times and everywhere nothing but sea.
The transition is very trying. The Parisian, accustomed to the noiseand perpetual motion of a great city, cannot at once enter into orcomprehend the poetry of the sailor's life, of which he knows nothing,or the sublime pleasures and keen enjoyments which those granite-heartedmen, exposed incessantly to a struggle with the elements, constantlyexperience; men who laugh at the tempest and brave the hurricane; who,twenty times a minute, stand face to face with death, and at last feelsuch a contempt for it that they end by not believing in it. The hoursare of interminable length to the passenger who pines for the land;every day appears an age to him. With his eyes constantly turned towarda point which he begins to imagine he shall never gain, he sinks, inspite of himself, into a species of gloomy nostalgia, which the sight ofthe wished for port is alone powerful enough to dissipate.
The Count de Prebois-Crance and Valentine Guillois had, then, undergonethe dispersion of all the illusions and all the ennuis attendant upon afirst sea voyage. During the first days they were employed in recallingthe vivid remembrance of that other life from which they had partedfor ever. They talked over the surprise which the sudden disappearanceof the Count would cause in the fashionable society from which hehad fled without warning, and without leaving any means of tracinghim. Forgetting for awhile the distance which separated them from theAmerica to which they were bound, they dwelt at great length upon theunknown pleasures which awaited them upon that golden soil, that landof promise for all sorts of adventurers, but which, alas! often offersthose who go thither in the hope of gaining an easy fortune, nothing butdisappointment and sorrow.
As every subject, however interesting it may be, must in the end growexhausted, the two young men, to escape the fatiguing monotony of thevoyage, had the good sense so to arrange their existence as to preventtedium from gaining the influence over them which it had upon theother passengers. Twice a day, morning and evening, the Count, who wasperfectly well acquainted with Spanish, gave his foster brother lessonsin that language, lessons by which he profited so well, that after twomonths' study, he was able to carry on a conversation in Spanish. Whenhe had made such progress, the young men employed no other language,either between themselves or with the persons on board who understoodit. This habit produced the desired result; that is to say, Valentine,in a very short time, spoke Spanish, which is not difficult to acquire,as fluently as French; and then, in return, Valentine occasionallybecame the professor. He made Louis go through gymnastic exercises, inorder to develop his natural strength, accustom his body to fatigue, andrender him capable of supporting the rude exigencies of his new position.
We will here, for a moment, return to the character of ValentineGuillois, a character of which the reader, from the young man's mannerof acting and speaking, might form a completely erroneous opinion, andthis we think it our duty to rectify. Morally, Valentine Guillois wasa young fellow quite unacquainted with himself; hot-headed, giddy inthe extreme, the surface had been slightly vitiated by reading chosenwithout discernment; but the foundation was essentially good. Heunited in himself all the characteristics of a class whose knowledgeof the world is obtained from romances and the dramas of the Faubourgdu Temple. He had sprung up like a mushroom upon _the pave_ of Paris,performing for bread, as he himself said, the most eccentric andimpossible things. As a soldier, he had lived from hand to mouth,happy in the present, and careless of a future whose existence was souncertain for him. But in the heart of this thoughtless _gamin_ a newsentiment had germinated, and, in a very short time, taken deep root,--ahearty devotion to the man who had held out his hand to him, had hadpity on his mother, and who, by dragging him from the slough in which hewas plunged, without hope of ever rising, had given him a consciousnessof his own personal value. The death of this benefactor had struckhim like a clap of thunder. He felt all the importance of the missionwith which his dying colonel had charged him, the responsible burdenhe imposed upon him, and he swore, with the firm resolution of keepinghis oath, cost what it might, to watch, like an attentive and devotedbrother, over the son of him who had made a man of him equal to othermen. The two most prominent points of Valentine's character were, anenergy which obstacles only augmented instead of depressing, and an ironwill.
With these two qualities, employed to the extent to which Valentinecarried them, a man is sure to accomplish great things, and, if deathdoes not surprise him on the road, to attain, at a given moment, theobject, whatever it may be, which he has marked out for himself. In thepresent circumstances, these qualities were invaluable to the Count dePrebois-Crance, a man of a dreamy, poetical nature, weak character, andtimid mind, who, accustomed from his birth to the easy life of peopleof fortune, was entirely ignorant of the incessant difficulties of thenew life into which he found himself suddenly cast. As always happens,when two men gifted with such opposite qualities meet, Valentine wasnot long in gaining over his foster brother a great moral influence, aninfluence which he employed with infinite tact, without ever renderinghis companion aware of it; he appeared to do everything according tohis will, whilst imposing his own upon him. In short, these two men,who loved each other thoroughly, and had but one head and one heart,perfected each other.
The mode of speaking employed by Valentine in the early chapters ofthis history, was not at all habitual to him, and had truly astonishedhimself. Rising to the level of the situation in which the resolution ofthe young man he wished to save placed him, he had comprehended, withthat sound common sense which he unwittingly possessed, that insteadof desponding over the misfortune which struck his foster brother sounexpectedly, it was his duty, on the contrary, to endeavour to impartto him the courage he was deficient in. Thus, as we have seen, hefound in his heart arguments so peremptorily decisive, that the Countconsented to live, and gave himself up to his counsels. Valentine didnot hesitate. The departure of Dona Rosario furnished him with theexcuse he needed for dragging his foster brother from the Parisian gulfwhich, after having swallowed up his fortune, threatened to swallow uphimself. Perceiving, before all else, the necessity for expatriatinghim, he persuaded Louis to follow the object of his love to America; andboth set out gaily for the New World, abandoning the country which, likeother emigrants, they fancied had been so ungrateful to them.
Often during the passage the young Count had felt his courage flag,and his faith in the future abandon him, when thinking of the life ofstruggles and trials that awaited him in America. But Valentine, byhis inexhaustible gaiety, his incredible store of anecdotes, and hisincessant sallies, always succeeded in smoothing the wrinkles from thebrow of his companion, who, with his habitual carelessness and want ofenergy, allowed himself to sink under that occult influence of Valentinewhich remoulded him, without his cognizance, and gradually made a newman of him.
Such was the state of mind in which our two personages found themselveswhen the packet boat cast anchor in the roads of Valparaiso. Valentine,with his imperturbable assurance, doubted of nothing: he was persuadedthat the people he was about to have to do with were very much beneathhim in intelligence, and that he could manage very well to attain thedouble object which he aimed at. The Count entirely depended upon hisfoster brother for finding for him the woman he loved, and whom he hadcome so far to seek. As to retrieving his fortune, he did not even dreamof that.
Valparaiso--Valley of Paradise--so named probably by antiphrasis, for itis the filthiest and ugliest city of Spanish America--is nothing but adepot for foreigners, whom commercial interests do not call int
o Chili.Our young men only remained there long enough to equip themselves inthe costume of the country; that is to say, to assume the Panama hat,the _poncho_, and _polenas_; then, each armed with two double-barrelledpistols, a rifle, and a long knife in his belt, they left the port, and,mounted on excellent horses, took their course towards Santiago, on theevening preceding the day on which the execution we have described inthe preceding chapter was to take place. The weather was magnificent;--the rays of a burning sun rendered the very dust golden, and made thestones of the road shine like jewels.
"Ah!" said Valentine, as soon as they found themselves upon the superbroad which leads to the capital of Chili; "it does one good to breathethe air of the land--_caramba_, as they say here. Well, now, here weare in this boasted America, and now we must set about collecting ourharvest of gold."
"And Dona Rosario?" said his foster brother, in a melancholy tone.
"Oh! we shall have found her within a fortnight," replied Valentine,with astounding confidence.
With these consolatory words, he animated his horse with the spur, andthe distance before them rapidly diminished.