to take him to Santa Cruz, twenty miles away. We were to go to the hotel and spend a week in St. Thomas before we sailed over to Santa Cruz.
A famously good French table we found, and the heterogeneous company of all the islands joined in this hotel, which from its piazza commanded a splendid view. The thermometer stood at 88°, although it was December. Near us at dinner sat Father Ambrosius, a most celebrated Catholic priest, who had been on the Merlin. Father Ambrosius had been sufficiently human to talk to the young bride of subjects in which she then took a decided interest, and perhaps does yet.
Amid those tropical seas and lustrous stars and those soft breezes, on whose wings fly delicate love fancies and tender dreams, the old monk had talked to us of the Provençal poetry, of Petrarch, of Clémence Isaure and the violet, of old Spanish romance, and of modern French romance and poetry. He had all Petrarch's sonnets at his tongue's end. No two young married lovers had ever a better companion. Even at the dinner he proved himself a gourmet, was a capital judge of wines, and told us what to eat and what to avoid; he even told us who people were — such as the old sun-dried banker, the Danish Councillor Feddustal, the Danish beauty Miss Stridiron, etc. After dinner he sat out with us on the balcony, looking at the unlimited reach of ocean and the calm, splendid, brilliantly illuminated heaven. Venus seemed to hang down by an invisible thread, and she caused the palm-trees to cast a visible shadow; she glowed with such pale, intense fire in that clear air that the earth was filled with her radiance. He knew his classics as well as his breviary; he knew even human nature; he knew literature; he had taste and intelligence — in fact, we always wished that we could have
