Inspired by the genius of repressed feeling, Etienne created a mystical language by which to communicate with his mother.

He studied the resources of his voice like an opera-singer, and often he came beneath her windows to let her hear his melodiously melancholy voice, when Beauvouloir by a sign informed him she was alone.

Formerly, as a babe, he had consoled his mother with his smiles, now, become a poet, he caressed her with his melodies.
"Those songs give me life," said the duchess to Beauvouloir, inhaling the air that Etienne's voice made living.
At length the day came when the poor son's mourning began.

Already he had felt the mysterious correspondences between his emotions and the movements of the ocean.

The divining of the thoughts of matter, a power with which his occult knowledge had invested him, made this phenomenon more eloquent to him than to all others.