The mother's eyes were full of tears.
"I once knew a man," continued the little priest, glancing to a side aisle where he had noticed Evariste and Jean sitting against each other, "who was carefully taught, from infancy to manhood, this single only principle of life: defiance.

Not justice, not righteousness, not even gain; but defiance: defiance to God, defiance to man, defiance to nature, defiance to reason; defiance and defiance and defiance." "He is going to tell it!" murmured Evariste to Jean.
"This man," continued Pere Jerome, "became a smuggler and at last a pirate in the Gulf of Mexico.

Lord, lay not that sin to his charge alone! But a strange thing followed.

Being in command of men of a sort that to control required to be kept at the austerest distance, he now found himself separated from the human world and thrown into the solemn companionship with the sea, with the air, with the storm, the calm, the heavens by day, the heavens by night.

My friends, that was the first time in his life that he ever found himself in really good company.
"Now, this man had a great aptness for accounts.