Perhaps the emotions, so sweet to all, are painful to him only because
he cannot communicate them, share them with another. It is not the
noisy life of cities which he asks, not even that of the shore. But,
at least, a companion, a being to reply to his voice, to be associated
with his joys, his sorrows. Marimonda! No, he recognizes it now!
Marimonda could amuse him, but was not sufficient; she inhabited with
him only the exterior world, she communicated with him only by things
visible and palpable; her affection for her master, her gentleness,
her admirable instinct, sometimes succeeded in lessening the distance
which separated their two natures, but did not wholly fill up the
interval.
He had exaggerated the intelligence which, besides, increased at the
expense of her strength, as with all monkeys; for God has not willed
that an animal should approximate too closely to man; he had overrated
the sense of her acts, because he needed near him a thinking and
acting being; but with her, confidences, plans, hopes, communication,
the exchange of all those intimate and mysterious thoughts which are
the life of the soul, were they possible? Even her eyes did not see
like his own; admiration was forbidden to her; admiration, that
precious faculty, which exists only for man,--and which becomes
extinct by isolation.
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