It had ever been
an enigma to him, this purposeless mass of water. Not even good to
drink. He knew nothing of those fables of the pagans--of old Poseidon
and white-armed Leucothea and the blithe crew of Triton and
silver-footed Thetis moving upon the placid sunlit waters; nothing of
that fair sea-born goddess whose beauty swayed the hearts of men. His
Venus ideals had been of a more terrestrial nature--the wives or
daughters of army generals and state functionaries who desired
advancement, and sometimes got it.
Not even good to drink! There was nothing like this in Holy Russia. God
would never have allowed it. The uselessness of this sea had always
been to him a source of perplexity and even vague apprehension. The
spectacle of this shining immensity troubled his world-scheme. Why did
God create water, when land would have been so much more useful? Often
had he puzzled on the subject. . . . Why?
But now, in the evening of his life and the extremity of his anguish,
the truth was made manifest.
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