The sea wrinkled slowly against the ship’s sides. The sky filled with stars. And Mersault, in silence, felt in himself extreme and violent powers to love, to marvel at this life with its countenance of sunlight and tears, this life in its salt and hot stone – it seemed that by caressing this life, all his powers of love and despair would unite. That was his poverty, that was his sole wealth. As if by writing zero, he was starting over again, but with a consciousness of his powers and a lucid intoxication which urged him on in the face of his fate.
