Volume VIII Part 2 (1/2)
But her husband shook his head in denial, though at the salanced coht by the threespas fins, and dull, ineffectual efforts, gasping in the fatal air Old Roland took the basket between his knees and tilted it up, e that heat the bottom, and their death-throes beca smell of their bodies, a wholesome reek of brine, came up from the full depths of the creel The old fishererly, as we smell at roses, and exclaih!” and he went on: ”How many did you pull out, doctor?”
His eldest son, Pierre, a man of thirty, with black whiskers trimmed square like a lawyer's, his moustache and beard shaved away, replied:
”Oh, not er ”And you, Jean?” said he
Jean, a tall fellow, er than his brother, fair, with a full beard, smiled and murmured:
”Much the same as Pierre--four or five”
Every tihted father Roland He had hitched his line round a row-lock, and folding his arain try to fish after noon After ten in theit is all over The lazy brutes will not bite; they are taking their siesta in the sun” And he looked round at the sea on all sides, with the satisfied air of a proprietor
He was a retired jeweler who had been led by an inordinate love of seafaring and fishi+ng to fly froh s
He retired to le Havre, bought a boat, and became an amateur skipper
His two sons, Pierre et Jean, had remained at Paris to continue their studies, and came for the holidays from time to ti school, Pierre, the elder, five years older than Jean, had felt a vocation to various professions and had tried half a dozen in succession, but, soon disgusted with each in turn, he started afresh with new hopes Medicine had been his last fancy, and he had set to ith so much ardor that he had just qualified after an unusually short course of study, by a special remission of tient, fickle, but obstinate, full of Utopias and philosophical notions
Jean, as as fair as his brother was dark, as deliberate as his brother was veheone through his studies for the law and had just taken his diploma as a licentiate, at the time when Pierre had taken his ina little rest at ho at Havre if they could find a satisfactory opening
But a vague jealousy, one of those dorrow up between brothers or sisters and slowly ripen till they burst, on the occasion of ato one of theressive animosity They were fond of each other, it is true, but they watched each other Pierre, five years old when Jean was born, had looked with the eyes of a little petted animal at that other little animal which had suddenly come to lie in his father's and mother's arms and to be loved and fondled by them Jean, froentleness, and good tely hearing the praises of this great lad whose sweetness in his eyes was indolence, whose gentleness was stupidity, and whose kindliness was blindness His parents, whose dreauished calling, bla his s, and all his ineffectual ienerous ideas and the liberal professions
Since he had grown to er said in so many words: ”Look at Jean and follow his example,” but every time he heard them say ”Jean did this--Jean does that,” he understood theirand the hint the words conveyed
Their mother, an orderly soul, a thrifty and rather sentimental woman of the middle class, with the soul of a soft-hearted book-keeper, was constantly quenching the little rivalries between her two big sons to which the petty events of their life in coave rise day by day
Another little circumstance, too, just now disturbed her peace of mind, and she was in fear of some complication; for in the course of the winter, while her boys were finishi+ng their studies, each in his own line, she had hbor, Mme Rosemilly, theof a captain of a--quite young, only three-and-twenty--a wo intellect who knew life by instinct as the free anih, understood, and weighed every conceivable contingency, and judged them with a wholesome, strict, and benevolentto work or chat for an hour in the evening with these friendly neighbors, ould give her a cup of tea
Father Roland, always goaded on by his seafaring craze, would question their new friend about the departed captain; and she would talk of hies, and his old-world tales, without hesitation, like a resigned and reasonable woman who loves life and respects death
The two sons on their return, finding the prettyquite at hoan to court her, less from any wish to charm her than fro practical and prudent, sincerely hoped that one of the , for she was rich; and then she would have liked that the other should not be grieved
Mht waving hair, fluttering at the least breath of wind, and an alert, daring, pugnacious little ith her, which did not in the least answer to the sober method of her mind
She already seemed to like Jean best, attracted, no doubt, by an affinity of nature This preference, however, she betrayed only by an almost imperceptible difference of voice and look and also by occasionally asking his opinion She seeuess that Jean's vieould support her ohile those of Pierre must inevitably be different When she spoke of the doctor's ideas on politics, art, philosophy, or morals, she would sometimes say: ”Your crotchets” Then he would look at her with the cold gleaainst wos
Never till his sons ca expeditions, nor had he ever taken his wife; for he liked to put off before daybreak, with his ally, Captain Beausire, a master h tides and horis, known as Jean Bart, in whose charge the boat was left
But one evening of the week before, as M with the,”
the jeweler, flattered on his passion, and suddenly fired with the wish to impart it, to make a convert after the manner of priests, exclaimed: ”Would you like to come?”
”To be sure I should”
”Next Tuesday?”
”Yes, next Tuesday”