In his after life, during his exile, the reminiscence of these delightful returns at dawn, after the nights of smuggling, caused in him an indescribable and very anguishing nostalgia.

But his love for the hereditary soil was not as simple as that of his companions.

As in all his sentiments, as in all his sensations, there were mingled in it diverse elements.

At first the instinctive and unanalyzed attachment of his maternal ancestors to the native soil, then something more refined coming from his father, an unconscious reflection of the artistic admiration which had retained the stranger here for several seasons and had given to him the caprice of allying himself with a girl of these mountains in order to obtain a Basque descendance .-- .