CHAPTER VI.

THE RESTORATION OF HEART AND BROTHERHOOD.

There are three forms of Nature which especially expand and elevate our souls, release her from her heavy clay and earthy limits, and send her, exulting, to sail amidst the wonders and mysteries of the Infinite.

First; there is the variable Ocean of Air with its glorious banquet of light, its vapors, its twilight, and its shifting phantasmagoria of capricious creatures; coming into existence only to depart on the instant.

Second; there is the fixed Ocean of the earth, its undulating and vast waves as we see them from the tops of "earth o'er gazing mountains," the elevations which testify its antique mobility, and the sublimity of its mightier mountains clad in eternal snows.

Third; there is the Ocean of waters, less mobile than air, less fixed than earth, but docile, in its movements, to the celestial bodies.

These three things form the gamut by which the Infinite speaks to our souls. Nevertheless, let us point out some very notable differences. The air-Ocean is so mobile that we can scarcely examine it. It deceives, it decoys, it diverts; it dissipates and breaks up our chain of thought. For an instant, it is an immense hope, the day of an infinity;--anon, it is not so; all flies from before us, and our hearts are grieved, agitated, and filled with doubt. Why have I been permitted to see for a moment that immense flood of light? The memory of that brief gleaming must ever abide with me, and that memory makes all things here on Earth look dark.

The fixed ocean of the mountains is not thus transient or fugitive; on the contrary, it stops us at every step, and imposes upon us the necessity of a very hard, though wholesome, gymnastic. Contemplation here has to be bought at the price of the most violent action. Nevertheless, the opacity of the Earth, like the transparency of the air, frequently deceives and bewilders us. Who can forget that for ten years Ramon, in vain, sought to reach Mount Perdu, though often within sight of it?

Great, very great, is the difference between the two elements; the Earth is mute and the Ocean speaks. The Ocean is a voice. It speaks to the distant stars, it answers to their movements in its deep and solemn language. It speaks to the Earth on the shores, replying to the echoes that reply again; by turns wailing, soothing, threatening, its deepest roar is presently succeeded by a sad, pathetic sigh. And it especially addresses itself to Man. As it is the fecund womb in which creation began and still continues, it has creation's living eloquence; it is Life speaking to Life! The millions, the countless myriads, of beings, to which it gives birth, are its words. That milky Sea from which they proceed, that fecund marine jelly, even before it is organized, while yet white and foaming,--speaks. All these mingled together makes the unity, the great and solemn voice of the Ocean.

And, "what are those wild waves saying?" They are telling of _Life_, of the eternal Metamorphosis; of the great fluid existence, shaming our senseless ambitions of the earth-world.

They are telling of _Immortality_. An indomitable strength is at the bottom of Nature, how much more so at Nature's summit, the Soul! And it speaks of Partnership, of Union. Let us accept the swift exchange which, in the individual, exists between the diverse elements; let us accept the superior Law which unites the living members of the same body--Humanity; and, still more, let us accept and respect the supreme Law which makes us create and coöperate with the Great Soul, associated as we are--in proportion with our powers,--with the loving Harmony of the world--copartners in the Life of God.

The Sea very distinctly, in that voice that is mistakenly supposed to be a mere confusion of sounds, articulates those grave words. But man does not easily recognize those words, when he first arrives on the shore exhausted by worldly struggles, deafened, distracted, by worldly babble. The sense of the higher life is dulled even among the best of us; the best of us, to a greater or less extent, resist that sense. And who shall teach us to quicken and obey that sense? Nature? Not yet. Softened into tenderness by the family, by the innocence of the child and the tenderness of the wife, man first takes an interest, real and strong, in the things of humanity, in the cares and studies which tend to preserve the family. But woman is earlier and more deeply interested in the Sea, in the Poetry of the Infinite. And thus we see that souls have sexes as well as bodies have. For the man thinks of the seaman more than of the sea's wonders; he thinks of its dangers, of its daily and hourly tragedies, and of the floating destiny of his family. The woman, tender as she is to individuals, takes less interest in classes. Every laborious man, who visits the coast, bestows his principal attention and his principal sympathy upon the hard life of the man of toil, the fisherman and the sailor; upon that hard hard life so laborious and perilous and so little productive of gain.

Such a man, while his wife rises and dresses her sweet child, walks upon the beach in the early morning just as the fishing boats return. The morning is cold, the night has been rainy, and the boats have shipped many a heavy sea. The men, and not only men but very small boys, too, are wet to the skin. And what have they brought back? Not much;--but they _have_ come back, and that is much. For last night, see you, they shipped many a sea and looked at death closely many a time. Ah! When the stranger reflects upon the hard life brought immediately under his purview, surely, however much he may have complained of his own lot, he will now learn to say "My lot is far better than theirs."

In the evening, just when the sun sets, coppery and threatening, into the sinister horizon, these men already have to sail again. And the stranger says to them, "Shall you not have bad weather, think you?" "Sir," they reply, "we must earn our bit of bread," and they and their sturdy boys push off to Sea. And their wives, more than serious, sad, follow them with their eyes; and more than one of those wives whisper an earnest prayer. And the stranger, too, whispers his prayer, and says to himself, "They will have a dirty night; would that they may return in safety."

And thus it is that the Sea opens the heart, and that even the hardest hearts are softened in presence of the great stern mother. In that presence, no matter what we may strive to think, we become humanized, sympathizing, tender. And Heaven knows how much need and how much occasion there are for sympathy there! Every kind of want and struggle is to be found among those brave, honest and intelligent marine populations who are incomparably the best of our country. I have lived a good deal on the coast. Every heroic virtue, which an inland population would praise so highly, is there an every day and very common-place matter. And, still more curious!--there is no pride among these hardy mariners. All our French pride is for the landsmen--the soldiery. But among our marine population the greatest dangers count for nothing; every one braves such every day, and no one ever thinks of boasting of them. I have never met with men who were milder or more modest (I had almost said more timid) than our Gironde pilots who, from Royan and from St. George's gallantly put out, to face all that Cordouan has of peril. There, as at Granville, and every where else on that coast, it is the women alone who have anything to say, or any business to do, on land. The brave pilots, when once on shore, never say a word in the way of command; peaceable as their valiant wives are superbly noisy, the men leave the women full authority to administer the poor income and to rule (occasionally with a pretty hard hand) the youngsters of the household. The husband, in fact, though he reads no Latin, literally and practically translates the Latin poet:

"Happy, when in mine own house I am as nobody."

Their wives, greatly interested about the foreigner, had, nevertheless, let it be boldly as truly said, a royal, a magnificent, a generous, kindly feeling. At St. Georges, they cut up, and scraped up, all their linen to make lint for the wounded at Solferino. At Entretat, three Englishmen being wrecked, and in awful danger, the whole population, men, women and children, rushed to the rescue, and dragged them to land with all the outward and visible signs of a real and a violent sensibility. And they were fed, and clothed, and tended, and relieved, even as though they had been compatriots, and very dear friends. This occurred in April, 1859.

Oh! Those kind French people! And yet, how hard, hitherto, has been their life! In our _regime_ of Classes (so useful, however, in itself, and from which we derive so much of giant strength) the sailor is compelled, at any moment, to leave the merchant service for the war ship, daily and hourly growing more severe, more crushing, in its hard discipline! Forty years ago the sailor sang, as he worked at the capstan bar; _now_ he heaves in silence. (Ial. Arch II. 522). And in the merchant service, the great fisheries are almost worked out. The profits of the Whale Fishery belong, almost entirely, to the outfitter. (Boitard, Diet. art. Cetaceæ, Whales, &c.) The Cod has diminished, the Mackerel grows more and more scarce. A very precious little book (_The Story of Rose Duchenin_, by herself) gives a most touching picture of this great destitution. Alphonse Karr, that admirable writer, had the good sense to write that book from the dictation of that Fisherman's Wife, without altering a word of hers, or adding a word of his own.

Étretat is not, properly speaking, a port. Situated little, if any, above the level of the Sea, and defended only by the pebbly bar which the sea has washed in, it is but poorly sheltered. And consequently, it is necessary that, according to the old Celtic custom, every vessel that runs in there, must be hauled up to the Quay by the cable and the capstan; the capstan bars being handled by the women, for the lads are all at sea. The labor and the difficulty will be easily understood by all who read this. The lubberly craft, as it is drawn up, hits hard from boulder to boulder, and ascends only by leaps, violent and damaging, and still more threatening than either. And at every leap and every shock, those poor women suffer from the hard blow to their necks and from the bitterly painful emotions of their poor hearts.

When I first witnessed this terrible labor, I was wounded, saddened in mine inmost heart. My first impulse was to bear a hand and lend my aid. But the thing would seem so singular, I thought, that a something, I know not what, of false shame, arrested me. But every day I lent a hand, at least with my wishes and my prayers. I went, and looked. Those young and charming, though anything but pretty, women and girls did not sport the short red petticoat of the coasts, but long robes; and for the most part, they had the refined and delicate aspect of the young lady of the great city. Bending to that hard toil (a filial, and, therefore, a noble toil) they had a certain mingled grace and pride, and, in all that hard toil, not a complaint, not even a sigh, escaped them.

That very small Quay of Boulders, small as it is, yet is too large. I saw there a number of vessels, abandoned, useless. For, see you, the Fishery has become so unproductive! The fish have fled that shore. Entretat languishes, perishes, so near to languishing, and, but for its sea-bathing, perishing, Dieppe, which owes its present existence--such as it is!--to the greater or less number of visitors, who render Dieppe in one season prosperous, and in another as nearly as possible, bankrupt. And this very influx from Paris, worldly Paris, is, after all, morally, at least, a real scourge to that marine population.

Our Norman populations who discovered America, and who, ever since the fourteenth century, have known Africa, are every year becoming less and less in love with the sea, so that, year by year, more and more of them are turning their faces inland. The descendant of the bold fellow who formerly harpooned the Whale, is now a pale cotton-spinner of Montville or of Balbec.

It is for Science, it is for the Law, to put a stop to this fearful decay. The former with its skill, its sound advice will,--if such advice be resolutely acted upon, _economise the Sea and_ revive that Fishery which is the very nursery of Seamen; and in the next place, the Law, less exclusively caring for the interests of the real _élite_, the real flower and elect of the country, in no wise to be compared to those great masses from which we draw our soldiery, but who, under given circumstances, will be able to cut the Gordian knot of the world.

Such were my reflections, on the little wharf or Quay of Etretat, in the cloudy and rainy summer of 1860, while the capstan bar was heaved at by young females, while the capstan screamed at every turn, and while the whole scene put one in mind of _desolation for the present, and worse to come_.

And thus is it with our century. Ever since 1730, and so in the present day, labor, fatigue, and slowness have been upon us. Let us all, of no matter what rank, put hand and strength to the capstan bar! But, alas! how many of us prefer _picking up pebbles on the wild_ sea shore!

We read that Scipio, stern conqueror of Carthage, and Terence, the lucky refugee from that shipwreck of a world, amused themselves in picking up shells on the sea shore; capital friends in their forgetfulness of the past. They enjoyed the _dolce far niente_; they were luxurious in their enjoyment of the illusion of being _boys once more_. But let not that be _our_ wish. We will not, we must not, we dare not, forget _our_ duty; no, with persistent labor, with uncooling ardor, we will put our hands to the capstan bar, and help to _warp up_ this great, but worn and much tried century.