And the navigator, followed by a crew as numerous as it was imaginary, would leap ashore, sword in hand, scaling some mountains of books that were the Andes, and piercing various volumes with the tip of an old lance in order to plant his standard there.

Oh, why had he not been one of the conquerors ?...
Fragments of a conversation between his godfather and his father, who believed everything was already known regarding the surface of the earth, left him unconvinced.

Something must still be left for him to discover! He was the meeting point of two families of sailors.

His mother's brothers had ships on the coast of Catalunia.

His father's ancestors had been valorous and obscure navigators, and there in the _Marina_ was his uncle, the doctor, a genuine man of the sea.
When he grew tired of these imaginative orgies, he used to examine the portraits of different epochs stowed away in the garret.