Pierre and Jean | Page 4

Bell


CHAPTER I
"Tschah!" exclaimed old Roland suddenly, after he had remained
motionless for a quarter of an hour, his eyes fixed on the water, while
now and again he very slightly lifted his line sunk in the sea.
Mme. Roland, dozing in the stern by the side of Mme. Rosemilly, who
had been invited to join the fishing-party, woke up, and turning her
head to look at her husband, said:
"Well, well! Gerome."
And the old fellow replied in a fury:
"They do not bite at all. I have taken nothing since noon. Only men
should ever go fishing. Women always delay the start till it is too late."
His two sons, Pierre and Jean, who each held a line twisted round his
forefinger, one to port and one to starboard, both began to laugh, and
Jean remarked:
"You are not very polite to our guest, father."
M. Roland was abashed, and apologized.
"I beg your pardon, Mme. Rosemilly, but that is just like me. I invite
ladies because I like to be with them, and then, as soon as I feel the
water beneath me, I think of nothing but the fish."
Mme. Roland was now quite awake, and gazing with a softened look at
the wide horizon of cliff and sea.
"You have had good sport, all the same," she murmured.

But her husband shook his head in denial, though at the same time he
glanced complacently at the basket where the fish caught by the three
men were still breathing spasmodically, with a low rustle of clammy
scales and struggling fins, and dull, ineffectual efforts, gasping in the
fatal air. Old Roland took the basket between his knees and tilted it up,
making the silver heap of creatures slide to the edge that he might see
those lying at the bottom, and their death-throes became more
convulsive, while the strong smell of their bodies, a wholesome reek of
brine, came up from the full depths of the creel. The old fisherman
sniffed it eagerly, as we smell at roses, and exclaimed:
"Cristi! But they are fresh enough!" 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 mustache and beard shaved away, replied:
"Oh, not many; three or four."
The father turned to the younger. "And you, Jean?" said he.
Jean, a tall fellow, much younger than his brother, fair, with a full beard,
smiled and murmured:
"Much the same as Pierre--four or five."
Every time they told the same fib, which delighted father Roland. He
had hitched his line round a row-lock, and folding his arms he
announced:
"I will never again try to fish after noon. After ten in the morning it 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 jeweller who had been led by an inordinate love of
seafaring and fishing to fly from the shop as soon as he had made
enough money to live in modest comfort on the interest of his savings.

He retired to le Havre, bought a boat, and became an amateur skipper.
His two sons, Pierre and Jean, had remained at Paris to continue their
studies, and came for the holidays from time to time to share their
father's amusements.
On leaving 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 work
with so much ardour that he had just qualified after an unusually short
course of study, by a special remission of time from the minister. He
was enthusiastic, intelligent, fickle, but obstinate, full of Utopias and
philosophical notions.
Jean, who was as fair as his brother was dark, as deliberate as his
brother was vehement, as gentle as his brother was unforgiving, had
quietly gone through his studies for the law and had just taken his
diploma as a licentiate, at the time when Pierre had taken his in
medicine. So they were now having a little rest at home, and both
looked forward to settling in Havre if they could find a satisfactory
opening.
But a vague jealousy, one of those dormant jealousies which grow up
between brothers or sisters and slowly ripen till they burst, on the
occasion of a marriage perhaps, or of some good fortune happening to
one of them, kept them on the alert in a sort of brotherly and non-
aggressive