THE ARCHIPELAGO OF BREHAT. 119 



was able to study with more steadiness and good-will 

 than I had done at Chausey. I had secured a 

 lodging at the house of the keeper of the artillery 

 stores of the island, and by having some one at 

 hand with whom I could enter into friendly inter- 

 change of thoughts, I escaped from that sense of 

 isolation which is one of the most enervating im- 

 pressions that the heart of man is capable of feeling. 

 I took pleasure in studying in the person of my 

 host that class of subaltern officers who daily render 

 to the state services as obscure as they are laborious, 

 with no prospect before them but that of obtaining a 

 trifling pension, or, in the case of a few amongst 

 them, the cross of the Legion of Honour. Detz was 

 one of this favoured number, and his thirty years' 

 service had certainly thoroughly earned for him the 

 bit of red riband which decorated his button-hole. 

 When I resided with him, his time was divided 

 between the performance of his modest military 

 duties and the cultivation of his garden. It was a 

 real pleasure to me to hear his long stories of the 

 service he had seen, and, like all old soldiers, he w^as 

 always ready to relate his past experience. I 

 often sought relaxation from my labours by pacing 

 up and down his little domain wdth him, while he 

 narrated the events of his campaigns in Germany, 

 and detailed all his sufferings in the English prisons 

 and his adventures at the taking of Algiers, pausing 

 from time to time to show me, with well-founded 

 pride, some fine specimens of his horticultural skill. 



Sometimes, too, when my body and mind, over- 

 fatigued by too long a walk, or by too protracted at- 



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