Ah! if he could have but found them in the island, how different would have been his fate!  But to live alone! to have no companions but his own thoughts! amid the dash of waves, the cry of birds, the bleating of goats, incessantly to imagine the sound of a human voice, and incessantly to experience the torture of being undeceived!  What elements of happiness has he ever met in this miserable island?  When he dreamed of creating resources for a long and peaceful future, he lied to himself.  A life favored by leisure would but crush him the oftener beneath the weight of thought, and it is thought which is killing him, the thought of isolation!

What import to him the beautiful sights spread out before his eyes?  The vast extent of sky and earth has repeated to him each day that he is lost, forgotten on an obscure point of the globe.  The sunrises and sunsets, with their magic aspects, this luxuriant tropical vegetation, the magnificent and picturesque scenery of his island, awaken in him only a feeling of restraint, an uneasiness which he cannot define.  Perhaps the emotions, so sweet to all, are painful to him only because he cannot communicate them, share them with another.  It is not the noisy life of cities which he asks, not even that of the shore.  But, at least, a companion, a being to reply to his voice, to be associated with his joys, his sorrows.  Marimonda!  No, he recognizes it now!  Marimonda could amuse him, but was not sufficient; she inhabited with him only the exterior world, she communicated with him only by things visible and palpable; her affection for her master, her gentleness, her admirable instinct, sometimes succeeded in lessening the distance which separated their two natures, but did not wholly fill up the interval.

He had exaggerated the intelligence which, besides, increased at the expense of her strength, as with all monkeys; for God has not willed that an animal should approximate too closely to man; he had overrated the sense of her acts, because he needed near him a thinking and acting being; but with her, confidences, plans, hopes, communication, the exchange of all those intimate and mysterious thoughts which are the life of the soul, were they possible?  Even her eyes did not see like his own; admiration was forbidden to her; admiration, that precious faculty, which exists only for man,—­and which becomes extinct by isolation.

How many others become extinct also!

Self-love, a just self-esteem, that powerful lever which sustains us, which elevates us, which compels us to respect in ourselves that nobility of race which we derive from God, what becomes of it in solitude?  For Selkirk, vanity itself has lost its power to stimulate.  Formerly, when in the presence of his comrades at St. Andrew or of the royal fleet, he had signalized himself by feats of address or courage, a sentiment of pride or triumph had inspired him.  Since his arrival in the island, his courage and address have had but too frequent opportunities of exercising themselves, but he has been excited only by want, by necessity, by a purely personal interest.  Besides, can one utter an exclamation of triumph, where there is not even an echo to repeat it?