THE PASSAGE.
It is a long voyage from Havre to Chili. The man accustomed to the
thousand agitations and the intoxicating whirlwind of the atmosphere of
Paris, necessarily finds the life on shipboard, the calm and regular
life, insipid and monotonous. It is certainly tedious to remain months
together in a vessel, confined to a cabin a few feet square, without
air and without sun, almost without light, and to have no walk but the
narrow deck of the ship, no horizon but the rolling or the tranquil
sea--at all times and everywhere nothing but sea.
The transition is very trying. The Parisian, accustomed to the noise
and perpetual motion of a great city, cannot at once enter into or
comprehend the poetry of the sailor's life, of which he knows nothing,
or the sublime pleasures and keen enjoyments which those granite-hearted
men, exposed incessantly to a struggle with the elements, constantly
experience; men who laugh at the tempest and brave the hurricane; who,
twenty times a minute, stand face to face with death, and at last feel
such a contempt for it that they end by not believing in it. The hours
are of interminable length to the passenger who pines for the land;
every day appears an age to him. With his eyes constantly turned toward
a point which he begins to imagine he shall never gain, he sinks, in
spite of himself, into a species of gloomy nostalgia, which the sight of
the wished for port is alone powerful enough to dissipate.
The Count de Prébois-Crancé and Valentine Guillois had, then, undergone
the dispersion of all the illusions and all the ennuis attendant upon a
first sea voyage. During the first days they were employed in recalling
the vivid remembrance of that other life from which they had parted
for ever. They talked over the surprise which the sudden disappearance
of the Count would cause in the fashionable society from which he
had fled without warning, and without leaving any means of tracing
him. Forgetting for awhile the distance which separated them from the
America to which they were bound, they dwelt at great length upon the
unknown pleasures which awaited them upon that golden soil, that land
of promise for all sorts of adventurers, but which, alas! often offers
those who go thither in the hope of gaining an easy fortune, nothing but
disappointment and sorrow.
As every subject, however interesting it may be, must in the end grow
exhausted, the two young men, to escape the fatiguing monotony of the
voyage, had the good sense so to arrange their existence as to prevent
tedium from gaining the influence over them which it had upon the
other passengers. Twice a day, morning and evening, the Count, who was
perfectly well acquainted with Spanish, gave his foster brother lessons
in that language, lessons by which he profited so well, that after two
months' study, he was able to carry on a conversation in Spanish. When
he had made such progress, the young men employed no other language,
either between themselves or with the persons on board who understood
it. 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 occasionally
became the professor. He made Louis go through gymnastic exercises, in
order to develop his natural strength, accustom his body to fatigue, and
render him capable of supporting the rude exigencies of his new position.
We will here, for a moment, return to the character of Valentine
Guillois, a character of which the reader, from the young man's manner
of acting and speaking, might form a completely erroneous opinion, and
this we think it our duty to rectify. Morally, Valentine Guillois was
a young fellow quite unacquainted with himself; hot-headed, giddy in
the extreme, the surface had been slightly vitiated by reading chosen
without discernment; but the foundation was essentially good. He
united in himself all the characteristics of a class whose knowledge
of the world is obtained from romances and the dramas of the Faubourg
du Temple. He had sprung up like a mushroom upon _the pavé_ of Paris,
performing for bread, as he himself said, the most eccentric and
impossible things. As a soldier, he had lived from hand to mouth,
happy in the present, and careless of a future whose existence was so
uncertain for him. But in the heart of this thoughtless _gamin_ a new
sentiment had germinated, and, in a very short time, taken deep root,--a
hearty devotion to the man who had held out his hand to him, had had
pity on his mother, and who, by dragging him from the slough in which he
was plunged, without hope of ever rising, had given him a consciousness
of his own personal value. The death of this benefactor had struck
him like a clap of thunder. He felt all the importance of the mission
with which his dying colonel had charged him, the responsible burden
he imposed upon him, and he swore, with the firm resolution of keeping
his oath, cost what it might, to watch, like an attentive and devoted
brother, over the son of him who had made a man of him equal to other
men. The two most prominent points of Valentine's character were, an
energy which obstacles only augmented instead of depressing, and an iron
will.
With these two qualities, employed to the extent to which Valentine
carried them, a man is sure to accomplish great things, and, if death
does not surprise him on the road, to attain, at a given moment, the
object, whatever it may be, which he has marked out for himself. In the
present circumstances, these qualities were invaluable to the Count de
Prébois-Crancé, a man of a dreamy, poetical nature, weak character, and
timid mind, who, accustomed from his birth to the easy life of people
of fortune, was entirely ignorant of the incessant difficulties of the
new life into which he found himself suddenly cast. As always happens,
when two men gifted with such opposite qualities meet, Valentine was
not long in gaining over his foster brother a great moral influence, an
influence which he employed with infinite tact, without ever rendering
his companion aware of it; he appeared to do everything according to
his 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 of
this history, was not at all habitual to him, and had truly astonished
himself. Rising to the level of the situation in which the resolution of
the young man he wished to save placed him, he had comprehended, with
that sound common sense which he unwittingly possessed, that instead
of desponding over the misfortune which struck his foster brother so
unexpectedly, it was his duty, on the contrary, to endeavour to impart
to him the courage he was deficient in. Thus, as we have seen, he
found in his heart arguments so peremptorily decisive, that the Count
consented to live, and gave himself up to his counsels. Valentine did
not hesitate. The departure of Doña Rosario furnished him with the
excuse he needed for dragging his foster brother from the Parisian gulf
which, after having swallowed up his fortune, threatened to swallow up
himself. Perceiving, before all else, the necessity for expatriating
him, he persuaded Louis to follow the object of his love to America; and
both set out gaily for the New World, abandoning the country which, like
other 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 of
struggles and trials that awaited him in America. But Valentine, by
his inexhaustible gaiety, his incredible store of anecdotes, and his
incessant sallies, always succeeded in smoothing the wrinkles from the
brow of his companion, who, with his habitual carelessness and want of
energy, allowed himself to sink under that occult influence of Valentine
which remoulded him, without his cognizance, and gradually made a new
man of him.
Such was the state of mind in which our two personages found themselves
when the packet boat cast anchor in the roads of Valparaiso. Valentine,
with his imperturbable assurance, doubted of nothing: he was persuaded
that the people he was about to have to do with were very much beneath
him in intelligence, and that he could manage very well to attain the
double object which he aimed at. The Count entirely depended upon his
foster brother for finding for him the woman he loved, and whom he had
come so far to seek. As to retrieving his fortune, he did not even dream
of that.
Valparaiso--Valley of Paradise--so named probably by antiphrasis, for it
is the filthiest and ugliest city of Spanish America--is nothing but a
depot for foreigners, whom commercial interests do not call into Chili.
Our young men only remained there long enough to equip themselves in
the costume of the country; that is to say, to assume the Panama hat,
the _poncho_, and _polenas_; then, each armed with two double-barrelled
pistols, a rifle, and a long knife in his belt, they left the port, and,
mounted on excellent horses, took their course towards Santiago, on the
evening preceding the day on which the execution we have described in
the preceding chapter was to take place. The weather was magnificent;--
the rays of a burning sun rendered the very dust golden, and made the
stones of the road shine like jewels.
"Ah!" said Valentine, as soon as they found themselves upon the superb
road which leads to the capital of Chili; "it does one good to breathe
the air of the land--_caramba_, as they say here. Well, now, here we
are in this boasted America, and now we must set about collecting our
harvest of gold."
"And Doña 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, and
the distance before them rapidly diminished.