THOUGHTS ON THE SEA
The boat makes her way between the islands; the sea is so calm that it scarcely seems to exist. Eleven o’clock in the morning, and it is hard to tell whether or not it is raining.
The thoughts of the voyager turn to the past year. He sees again his trip across the ocean in the stormy night; the ports, the stations, the arrival on Shrove Sunday, the trip to the house when, with a cold eye, he scanned the sordid festivities of the crowd through the mud-spattered windows of his carriage. His thoughts show him again his parents, his friends, old scenes,—and then the new departure. Unhappy retrospect! As if it were possible for anyone to retrieve his past.
It is this that makes the return sadder than the departure. The voyager re-enters his home as a guest. He is a stranger to all, and all is strange to him. (Servant, hang up the traveling cloak and do not carry it away! Soon it will be necessary to depart once more.) Seated at the family table he is a suspected guest, ill at ease. No, parents, it is never the same! This is a passer-by whom you have received, his ears filled with the fracas of trains and the clamor of the sea, like a man who imagines that he still feels beneath his feet the profound movement that lures him away. He is not the same man whom you conducted to the fateful wharf. The separation has taken place and he has entered upon the exile that follows it!