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Barkilphedro had succeeded, and it was for this that for so many years
the waves, the surge, the squalls had buffeted, shaken, thrown, pushed,
tormented, and respected this bubble of glass, which bore within it so
many commingled fates. It was for this that there had been a cordial
co-operation between the winds, the tides, and the tempests--a vast
agitation of all prodigies for the pleasure of a scoundrel; the infinite
co-operating with an earthworm! Destiny is subject to such grim
caprices.
Barkilphedro was struck by a flash of Titanic pride. He said to himself
that it had all been done to fulfil his intentions. He felt that he was
the object and the instrument.
But he was wrong. Let us clear the character of chance.
Such was not the real meaning of the remarkable circumstance of which
the hatred of Barkilphedro was to profit. Ocean had made itself father
and mother to an orphan, had sent the hurricane against his
executioners, had wrecked the vessel which had repulsed the child, had
swallowed up the clasped hands of the storm-beaten sailors, refusing
their supplications and accepting only their repentance; the tempest
received a deposit from the hands of death. The strong vessel containing
the crime was replaced by the fragile phial containing the reparation.
The sea changed its character, and, like a panther turning nurse, began
to rock the cradle, not of the child, but of his destiny, whilst he grew
up ignorant of all that the depths of ocean were doing for him.
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