A Drama on the Seashore | Page 9

of the
Cambremers, who from father to son have always been sailors; their

name says it--the sea bends under them. Pierre was a deep-sea
fisherman. He had boats, and fished for sardine, also for the big fishes,
and sold them to dealers. He'd have charted a large vessel and trawled
for cod if he hadn't loved his wife so much; she was a fine woman, a
Brouin of Guerande, with a good heart. She loved Cambremer so much
that she couldn't bear to have her man leave her for longer than to fish
sardine. They lived over there, look!" said the fisherman, going up a
hillock to show us an island in the little Mediterranean between the
dunes where we were walking and the marshes of Guerande. "You can
see the house from here. It belonged to him. Jacquette Brouin and
Cambremer had only one son, a lad they loved--how shall I say?-- well,
they loved him like an only child, they were mad about him. How
many times we have seen them at fairs buying all sorts of things to
please him; it was out of all reason the way they indulged him, and so
folks told them. The little Cambremer, seeing that he was never
thwarted, grew as vicious as a red ass. When they told pere Cambremer,
'Your son has nearly killed little such a one,' he would laugh and say:
'Bah! he'll be a bold sailor; he'll command the king's fleets.'-- Another
time, 'Pierre Cambremer, did you know your lad very nearly put out the
eye of the little Pougard girl?'--'Ha! he'll like the girls,' said Pierre.
Nothing troubled him. At ten years old the little cur fought everybody,
and amused himself with cutting the hens' necks off and ripping up the
pigs; in fact, you might say he wallowed in blood. 'He'll be a famous
soldier,' said Cambremer, 'he's got the taste of blood.' Now, you see,"
said the fisherman, "I can look back and remember all that--and
Cambremer, too," he added, after a pause. "By the time Jacques
Cambremer was fifteen or sixteen years of age he had come to be--what
shall I say?--a shark. He amused himself at Guerande, and was after the
girls at Savenay. Then he wanted money. He robbed his mother, who
didn't dare say a word to his father. Cambremer was an honest man
who'd have tramped fifty miles to return two sous that any one had
overpaid him on a bill. At last, one day the mother was robbed of
everything. During one of his father's fishing-trips Jacques carried off
all she had, furniture, pots and pans, sheets, linen, everything; he sold it
to go to Nantes and carry on his capers there. The poor mother wept
day and night. This time it couldn't be hidden from the father, and she
feared him--not for herself, you may be sure of that. When Pierre

Cambremer came back and saw furniture in his house which the
neighbors had lent to his wife, he said,--
"'What is all this?'
"The poor woman, more dead than alive, replied:
"'We have been robbed.'
"'Where is Jacques?'
"'Jacques is off amusing himself.'
"No one knew where the scoundrel was.
"'He amuses himself too much,' said Pierre.
"Six months later the poor father heard that his son was about to be
arrested in Nantes. He walked there on foot, which is faster than by sea,
put his hands on his son, and compelled him to return home. Once here,
he did not ask him, 'What have you done?' but he said:--
"'If you do not conduct yourself properly at home with your mother and
me, and go fishing, and behave like an honest man, you and I will have
a reckoning.'
"The crazy fellow, counting on his parent's folly, made a face; on
which Pierre struck him a blow which sent Jacques to his bed for six
weeks. The poor mother nearly died of grief. One night, as she was fast
asleep beside her husband, a noise awoke her; she rose up quickly, and
was stabbed in the arm with a knife. She cried out loud, and when
Pierre Cambremer struck a light and saw his wife wounded, he thought
it was the doing of robbers,--as if we ever had any in these parts, where
you might carry ten thousand francs in gold from Croisic to
Saint-Nazaire without ever being asked what you had in your arms.
Pierre looked for his son, but he could not find him. In the morning, if
that monster didn't have the face to come home, saying he had stayed at
Batz all night! I should tell you that the mother had not known where to
hide her money. Cambremer put his with Monsieur Dupotel at Croisic.
Their son's follies had by