The difference in their respective ages did not seem to mar the happiness of the keeper and the orphan girl. Both were possessed of that which renders marriage a blessing—the simple mind and the heart of kindly impulse. Children came, to draw still closer these ties, and to enliven their hearth. The younger was just born, when Dorot lost his wife, and was left alone with his son Michael, thirteen years of age. This premature widowerhood had revived the friendship of the two old shipmates. Their intercourse became more frequent. The skiff that served both establishments was stationed at the little haven of the Ile des Morts, and was thus at the disposition of the artillery-man, who missed no opportunity of coming to pass a few hours with his neighbours. But notwithstanding their proximity, and the ease with which the passage was made, these visits could not be of daily occurrence. Dorot was obliged to be constantly on the watch; his official orders were equally sudden and unforeseen; nor could he expose himself to the risk of too frequent absence. His appearance therefore at the lazaretto had not ceased to be a happy exception to the rule. Father, mother, and children alike found in it a festal occasion; and it was never without great rejoicing that the signal was observed announcing the agreeable visit, and the boat seen putting out from the little landing-place and stretching over towards Trébéron.
This time, so soon as Ropars saw her on the way, he went down to meet her. Scarcely had she touched the ground, when Michael jumped ashore, threw his arms about the keeper, then about the two little girls, and then ran off with the latter towards the house. Dorot stepping out in turn, shook hands heartily with Mathieu; and the pair, chatting, slowly began the ascent. Having reached the summit of the cliff, they faced about by force of habit, to take a look out to sea. The artillery-man remarked that the frigate had just clewed up her lower sails.
—"God help us! she's going to anchor," said he; "did you ever see, Mathieu, a homeward-bound ship let go so far from land?"
—"That depends," replied the old quarter-master; "we hold off when we mistrust a fort, or are afraid of reefs."
—"But there's nothing of that sort here," remarked Dorot; "the frigate has no need to fear the guns of the Castle which are her very good friends, or the roadstead which is as safe an anchorage as if she were fast in the dry-dock. There must be something extraordinary."
—"Perhaps the ship has to perform quarantine," suggested Ropars; "the Thetis is expected."
—"That's it; you've named her," cried the artillery-man, winking his eye and shading his forehead with one hand so as to look more fixedly at the distant vessel; "it is the Thetis, or I'm a heathen. I had her down yonder for a week, when she took her powder on board; I know her by the set of her masts and by her bearing on the water."
—"The Thetis!" echoed Mathieu; "then we shall soon see Monsieur Gabriel. What delight for Josèphe! Quick; let's tell her."
He was hurrying off, but Dorot kept him back. "No hurry," said he; "never reckon too surely on what a ship brings home. Pick people out, and they're just those that are missing when the roll's called. Better wait till the Lieutenant brings his own news."
—"You're right," replied the quarter-master; "the more so since the frigate comes, if I don't mistake, from the Havannah."
—"Who knows whether she won't bring you some lodgers for your lazaretto?"
—"So be it; they'll be welcome. With Geneviève and the children, one can't be dull; but once in a while there's no harm in a little company. You fellows at the Ile des Morts, you have the artillery despatch-carrier, who keeps you up to all that goes on, to say nothing of inspections and your convoys of powder; whilst here—never a thing! Not one visitor in a twelvemonth! At least, if you have to put people sometimes into quarantine, you hear what's done on land there, and that leaves you some thing to talk about for months."
The artillery-man shrugged his shoulders—"That's all very well, when they don't bring disease with them; but the old coasters still talk of a quarantine in which the lazaretto ran short of both earth and rock for burying the dead, and when the bodies were of necessity thrown into the sea with a shot attached to their necks, as in vessels out on a voyage."
—"Now may Christ spare us such a trial!" exclaimed Ropars, respectfully touching his hat, as he was used to do whenever he pronounced the Saviour's name. "But you're speaking of a long time ago, Dorot; please Heaven, we won't see such again. There are no heathen here now; and I believe that God's good will will take care of us."
Dorot nodded his acquiescence. In fact this confidence, springing from a simple faith, had up to that time been justified by experience. During the thirteen years that the keeper had spent at Trébéron, he had only received healthy persons into quarantine, who were complying with a formal regulation, and were obliged to make proof of their good health by undergoing this preventive sequestration. There were indeed rare exceptions. Like all lazarettos, that of Trébéron remained generally unoccupied; and the keeper kept watch there alone, like an ever-living sentinel posted in advance of the continent, for the purpose of warding off contagion.
As they chatted, Dorot and he had reached the house. Geneviève was waiting for them at the doorway, surrounded by the three children who laid hold of and talked to her all at once. After an exchange of their accustomed friendly greetings, she went in, with the two keepers, whilst Michael drew off Francine and Josèphe towards Brunette, who was waiting for them on a pinnacle of rock, eyeing them and bleating at them. The youngster, accustomed to chase his father's sheep upon the declivities of the Ile des Morts, endeavored to get at her; but the capricious creature sprung from point to point along the precipices, letting herself at every moment almost be caught, and at every moment bounding away from the hand that just could touch her.
Whilst the children kept up this chase, with a thousand calls to one another and a thousand peals of laughter, Ropars and Dorot entered the eating-room in which Geneviève was already laying the cloth. It was a room of middling size, furnished by the keeper himself at the period of his marriage, and ornamented with a few marine engravings. Amongst these was particularly distinguished a portrait of Jean Bart, that nautical Hercules on whom, as all the world knows, his traditional celebrity has fastened all manner of superhuman exploits and impossible adventures.
Having made his guest sit down, Mathieu went off to disinter his bottle of Rousillon wine; and brought it back all whitened with the sand, and capped with a green-waxed cork that bespoke its noble birth-place. Dorot good-temperedly complained of such extravagance, and hinted that he could not make his visit a long one, inasmuch as the officer commanding the post of the Ile des Morts had charged him to bring the skiff back before sunset. Geneviève therefore hurried herself to serve up the dinner, and called the children to take their places at table.
With persons whose entire life was contracted within the narrow limits of two small islands, the conversation could not be much varied. Mathieu talked of his still-lines set between the headlands of Trébéron, and Dorot of his small cherry-tree. The latter might be regarded as the one stumbling block of pride, over which the habitual modesty of the worthy sergeant was sure to trip. No other keeper before his time had succeeded in securing what he planted, from the sea wind; this was the only tree that had ever been seen in the two islands; and Lucullus might well have been less proud of the first cherry-tree that he brought from Persia, for the purpose of gracing his triumph. Humble as regards everything else, Dorot drew himself up proudly when there was any question of his