Nevertheless, in spite of his sombre melancholy, he came to feel the need of loving, of finding another mother, another soul for his soul.  But, separated from civilization by an iron wall, it was well-nigh impossible to meet with a being who had flowered like himself.  Instinctively seeking another self to whom to confide his thoughts and whose life might blend with his life, he ended in sympathizing with his Ocean.  The sea became to him a living, thinking being.  Always in presence of that vast creation, the hidden marvels of which contrast so grandly with those of earth, he discovered the meaning of many mysteries.  Familiar from his cradle with the infinitude of those liquid fields, the sea and the sky taught him many poems.  To him, all was variety in that vast picture so monotonous to some.  Like other men whose souls dominate their bodies, he had a piercing sight which could reach to enormous distances and seize, with admirable ease and without fatigue, the fleeting tints of the clouds, the passing shimmer of the waters.  On days of perfect stillness his eyes could see the manifold tints of the ocean, which to him, like the face of a woman, had its physiognomy, its smiles, ideas, caprices; there green and sombre; here smiling and azure; sometimes uniting its brilliant lines with the hazy gleams of the horizon, or again, softly swaying beneath the orange-tinted heavens.  For him all-glorious fetes were celebrated at sundown when the star of day poured its red colors on the waves in a crimson flood.  For him the sea was gay and sparkling and spirited when it quivered in repeating the noonday light from a thousand dazzling facets; to him it revealed its wondrous melancholy; it made him weep whenever, calm or sad, it reflected the dun-gray sky surcharged with clouds.  He had learned the mute language of that vast creation.  The flux and reflux of its waters were to him a melodious breathing which uttered in his ear a sentiment; he felt and comprehended its inward meaning.  No mariner, no man of science, could have predicted better than he the slightest wrath of the ocean, the faintest change on that vast face.  By the manner of the waves as they rose and died away upon the shore, he could foresee tempests, surges, squalls, the height of tides, or calms.  When night had spread its veil upon the sky, he still could see the sea in its twilight mystery, and talk with it.  At all times he shared its fecund life, feeling in his soul the tempest when it was angry; breathing its rage in its hissing breath; running with its waves as they broke in a thousand liquid fringes upon the rocks.  He felt himself intrepid, free, and terrible as the sea itself; like it, he bounded and fell back; he kept its solemn silence; he copied its sudden pause.  In short, he had wedded the sea; it was now his confidant, his friend.  In the morning when he crossed the glowing sands of the beach and came upon his rocks, he divined the temper of the ocean from a single glance; he could see landscapes