Chapter 13
Some weeks later Dr Porhoët was sitting among his books in the
quiet, low room that overlooked the Seine. He had given himself
over to a pleasing melancholy. The heat beat down upon the noisy
streets of Paris, and the din of the great city penetrated even to
his fastness in the Île Saint Louis. He remembered the cloud-laden
sky of the country where he was born, and the south-west wind that
blew with a salt freshness. The long streets of Brest, present to
his fancy always in a drizzle of rain, with the lights of cafés
reflected on the wet pavements, had a familiar charm. Even in foul
weather the sailor-men who trudged along them gave one a curious
sense of comfort. There was delight in the smell of the sea and in
the freedom of the great Atlantic. And then he thought
