VOUS DEVRIEZ VOIR MON EGLISE A LA DOMINIQUE;J'AI LA UNE VIERGE QUIEST VRAIMENT GENTILLE.''Ah,'I cried,'they told me you had said you would never build another church,and I wrote in my journal Icould not believe it.''OUI,J'AIMERAIS BIEN EN FAIRS UNE AUTRE,'
he confessed,and smiled at the confession.An artist will understand how much I was attracted by this conversation.There is no bond so near as a community in that unaffected interest and slightly shame-faced pride which mark the intelligent man enamoured of an art.He sees the limitations of his aim,the defects of his practice;he smiles to be so employed upon the shores of death,yet sees in his own devotion something worthy.Artists,if they had the same sense of humour with the Augurs,would smile like them on meeting,but the smile would not be scornful.
I had occasion to see much of this excellent man.He sailed with us from Tai-o-hae to Hiva-oa,a dead beat of ninety miles against a heavy sea.It was what is called a good passage,and a feather in the CASCO'S cap;but among the most miserable forty hours that any one of us had ever passed.We were swung and tossed together all that time like shot in a stage thunder-box.The mate was thrown down and had his head cut open;the captain was sick on deck;the cook sick in the galley.Of all our party only two sat down to dinner.I was one.I own that I felt wretchedly;and I can only say of the other,who professed to feel quite well,that she fled at an early moment from the table.It was in these circumstances that we skirted the windward shore of that indescribable island of Ua-pu;viewing with dizzy eyes the coves,the capes,the breakers,the climbing forests,and the inaccessible stone needles that surmount the mountains.The place persists,in a dark corner of our memories,like a piece of the scenery of nightmares.The end of this distressful passage,where we were to land our passengers,was in a similar vein of roughness.The surf ran high on the beach at Taahauku;the boat broached-to and capsized;and all hands were submerged.Only the brother himself,who was well used to the experience,skipped ashore,by some miracle of agility,with scarce a sprinkling.Thenceforward,during our stay at Hiva-oa,he was our cicerone and patron;introducing us,taking us excursions,serving us in every way,and making himself daily more beloved.