The swollen wave broke through the restraint of his will.  The old man sobbed, and threw himself on the ground; his milk-white hair was mingled with the sand of the sea.  Forty years had passed since he had seen his country, and God knows how many since he heard his native speech; and now that speech had come to him itself,—­it had sailed to him over the ocean, and found him in solitude on another hemisphere,—­it so loved, so dear, so beautiful!  In the sobbing which shook him there was no pain,—­ only a suddenly aroused immense love, in the presence of which other things are as nothing.  With that great weeping he had simply implored forgiveness of that beloved one, set aside because he had grown so old, had become so accustomed to his solitary rock, and had so forgotten it that in him even longing had begun to disappear.  But now it returned as if by a miracle; therefore the heart leaped in him.

Moments vanished one after another; he lay there continually.  The mews flew over the light-house, crying as if alarmed for their old friend.  The hour in which he fed them with the remnants of his food had come; therefore, some of them flew down from the light-house to him; then more and more came, and began to pick and to shake their wings over his head.  The sound of the wings roused him.  He had wept his fill, and had now a certain calm and brightness; but his eyes were as if inspired.  He gave unwittingly all his provisions to the birds, which rushed at him with an uproar, and he himself took the book again.  The sun had gone already behind the gardens and the forest of Panama, and was going slowly beyond the isthmus to the other ocean; but the Atlantic was full of light yet; in the open air there was still perfect vision; therefore, he read further: 

    “Now bear my longing soul to those forest slopes, to those green
       meadows.”

At last the dusk obliterates the letters on the white paper,—­the dusk short as a twinkle.  The old man rested his head on the rock, and closed his eyes.  Then “She who defends bright Chenstohova” took his soul, and transported it to “those fields colored by various grain.”  On the sky were burning yet those long stripes, red and golden, and on those brightnesses he was flying to beloved regions.  The pine-woods were sounding in his ears; the streams of his native place were murmuring.  He saw everything as it was; everything asked him, “Dost remember?” He remembers! he sees broad fields; between the fields, woods and villages.  It is night now.  At this hour his lantern usually illuminates the darkness of the sea; but now he is in his native village.  His old head has dropped on his breast, and he is dreaming.  Pictures are passing before his eyes quickly, and a little disorderly.  He does not see the house in which he was born, for war had destroyed it; he does not see his father and mother, for they died when he was a child; but still the village is as if he had left it yesterday,—­the