The return that spring of little Jeanne's father from a sea voyage
interested me greatly. For several days her house was topsy-turvy with
preparation, and one could guess the joy they felt over his approaching
arrival. The frigate that he commanded reached port a little earlier
than his family expected it, and from my window I saw him, one fine
evening, hurrying along the street alone, on his way home to surprise
his people. He had arrived from I know not which distant colony after an
absence of two or three years, but it did not seem to me that he was
the least altered in appearance. . . . One could then return to his
home unchanged? They did come to an end after all, those years of exile,
which now I find, in truth, much shorter than they seemed in those days!
My brother himself was to return the following autumn, and it would
doubtless then seem as if he had never been away from us.
And what joyous events those home-comings were! And what a distinction
surrounded those who had but newly returned from so great a distance!
The next day in Jeanne's yard I watched them unpack the enormous wooden
boxes that her father had brought from strange countries; some of them
were covered with tarpaulin cloth,--pieces of sails no doubt, that were
impregnated with the agreeable odor of the ship and the sea; two sailors
wearing large blue collars were busy uncording and unscrewing them;
and they took from them strange looking objects that had an odor of the
“colonies;” straw mats, water jars and Chinese vases; even cocoanuts and
other tropical fruits.
Jeanne's grandfather, himself an old seaman, was standing near me
watching from the corner of his eye the process of unpacking; suddenly,
from between the boards of a case that was being broken open with a
hatchet, there crawled out hastily some ugly little brown insects that
the sailors jumped on with their feet and destroyed.
“Cockroaches are they not, Captain?” I inquired of the grandfather.
“Ha! How do you know that, you little landlubber?” he laughingly
responded.
To tell the truth, I had never seen any such insects before; but uncles
who had lived in the tropics often spoke of them. And I was delighted to
make the acquaintance of these tiny creatures that are peculiar to ships
and to warm countries.