Behind me, thou blue devil! The doctor used to wander around bewildered by the port of Barcelona....

Too much noisy bustle, too much movement! Walking proudly along by the side of Ulysses, he loved to recount to him the adventures of his life as a sailor and cosmopolitan vagabond.

He considered his nephew the greatest of the Ferraguts, a true man of the sea like his ancestors but with the title of captain;--an adventurous rover over all oceans, as he had been, but with a place on the bridge, invested with the absolute command that responsibility and danger confer.

When Ulysses reembarked, the _Triton_ would take himself off to his own dominions.
"It will be next time, sure!" he would say in order to console himself for having to part with his nephew's son; and after a few months had passed by, he would reappear, each time larger, uglier, more tanned, with a silent smile which broke into words before Ulysses just as tempestuous clouds break forth in thunder claps.
Upon his return from a trip to the Black Sea, Dona Cristina announced to her son: "Your uncle has died." The pious senora lamented as a Christian the departure of her brother-in-law, dedicating a part of her prayers to him; but she insisted with a certain cruelty in giving an account of his sad end, for she had never been able to pardon his fatal intervention in the destiny of Ulysses.

He had died as he had lived,--in the sea, a victim, of his own rashness, without confession, just like any pagan.
Another legacy thus fell to Ferragut....