THE STUDY OF NATURE. 39 
looked forward with a delirious impatience that per- 
haps love has never known. But now that my father 
himself was leaving us— heaven, earth, everything 1/7 
A seemed undone. With whatever hope of reunion he 
might endeavour to cheer me, an internal voice, dis- 
tinct and terrible, such as one hears in great trials, told 
me that he would return no more. 
‘The house was sold, and the plantations laid out 
by our hands, the trees which belonged to toe family, 
were abandoned. Our animals were plainly inconsolable 
at my father’s departure. The dog—I forget for how 
many successive days—seated himself on the road which 
he had taken at his departure, howled, and returned. 
The most disinherited of all, the cat Moquo, no longer 
confided in any person, though he still came to regard 
with furtive glances the empty place. Then he took 
his resolution, and fled to the woods, from which we 
could never call him back; he resumed his early life, 
miserable and savage. 
“And I, too, I quitted the paternal roof, the hearth 
of my young years, with a heart for ever wounded. 
My mother, my sister, my brothers, the sweet friend- 
ships of infancy, disappeared behind me. I entered 
upon a life of trial and isolation. At Bayonne, how- 
ever, where I first resided, the sea of Biarritz spoke to 
me of my father; the waves which break on its shore, 
from America to Europe, repeated the story of his death; 
the snow-white ocean birds seemed to say, ‘We have 
seen him.’ 
“What remained to me? My climate, my birth- 
land, my language. But even these I lost. I was 
