Thoughts from Les Miserables

I had a truly rare opportunity recently to spend a week alone with my sweetheart for our anniversary. I grabbed the chance to tackle rereading Victor Hugo's masterpiece without interruptions from the children.

On page 369, Hugo describes the ship Orion:

"A vessel of the line is composed at once of the heaviest and lightest materials, because it has to contend simultaneously with the three forms of matter, the solid, the liquid and the fluid. She has eleven iron claws to grasp the rock at the bottom of the sea, and more wings and feelers than a butterfly to catch the breezes in the sky. Her breath is expelled through her hundred and twenty guns as through enormous trumpets, and proudly answers the thunderbolt. The ocean strives to lead it astray in the frightful similarity of its billows, but the ship has a compass, its soul, always counseling it and always pointing toward the north. On dark nights, its lanterns take the place of the stars. So, to oppose the wind, it has its ropes and canvas; against the water its timber; against the rock its iron, copper and lead; against the darkness, light; against immensity, a needle."

Anchors....wings....stars....How like the vessel we are, and similarly equipped.