Pierre and Jean | Page 8

steamboat responded to this salute as she went on
her way, leaving behind her a few broad undulations on the still and
glassy surface of the sea.
There were other vessels, each with its smoky cap, coming in from
every part of the horizon towards the short white jetty, which
swallowed them up, one after another, like a mouth. And the fishing
barks and lighter craft with broad sails and slender masts, stealing
across the sky in tow of inconspicuous tugs, were coming in, faster and
slower, towards the devouring ogre, who from time to time seemed to
have had a surfeit, and spewed out to the open sea another fleet of
steamers, brigs, schooners, and three-masted vessels with their tangled
mass of rigging. The hurrying steamships flew off to the right and left
over the smooth bosom of the ocean, while sailing vessels, cast off by
the pilot-tugs which had hauled them out, lay motionless, dressing
themselves from the main-mast to the fore-tops in canvas, white or
brown, and ruddy in the setting sun.
Mme. Roland, with her eyes half-shut, murmured: "Good heavens, how
beautiful the sea is!"
And Mme. Rosemilly replied with a long sigh, which, however, had no
sadness in it:
"Yes, but it is sometimes very cruel, all the same."
Roland exclaimed:
"Look, there is the Normandie just going in. A big ship, isn't she?"
Then he described the coast opposite, far, far away, on the other side of
the mouth of the Seine--that mouth extended over twenty kilometres,
said he. He pointed out Villerville, Trouville, Houlgate, Luc,

Arromanches, the little river of Caen, and the rocks of Calvados which
make the coast unsafe as far as Cherbourg. Then he enlarged on the
question of the sand-banks in the Seine, which shift at every tide so that
even the pilots of Quilleboeuf are at fault if they do not survey the
channel every day. He bid them notice how the town of Havre divided
Upper from Lower Normandy. In Lower Normandy the shore sloped
down to the sea in pasture-lands, fields, and meadows. The coast of
Upper Normandy, on the contrary, was steep, a high cliff, ravined, cleft
and towering, forming an immense white rampart all the way to
Dunkirk, while in each hollow a village or a port lay hidden: Etretat,
Fecamp, Saint-Valery, Treport, Dieppe, and the rest.
The two women did not listen. Torpid with comfort and impressed by
the sight of the ocean covered with vessels rushing to and fro like wild
beasts about their den, they sat speechless, somewhat awed by the
soothing and gorgeous sunset. Roland alone talked on without end; he
was one of those whom nothing can disturb. Women, whose nerves are
more sensitive, sometimes feel, without knowing why, that the sound
of useless speech is as irritating as an insult.
Pierre and Jean, who had calmed down, were rowing slowly, and the
Pearl was making for the harbour, a tiny thing among those huge
vessels.
When they came alongside of the quay, Papagris, who was waiting
there, gave his hand to the ladies to help them out, and they took the
way into the town. A large crowd, the crowd which haunts the pier
every day at high tide--was also drifting homeward. Mme. Roland and
Mme. Rosemilly led the way, followed by the three men. As they went
up the Rue de Paris they stopped now and then in front of a milliner's
or a jeweller's shop, to look at a bonnet or an ornament; then after
making their comments they went on again. In front of the Place de la
Bourse Roland paused, as he did every day, to gaze at the docks full of
vessels--the /Bassin du Commerce/, with other docks beyond, where
the huge hulls lay side by side, closely packed in rows, four or five
deep. And masts innumerable; along several kilometres of quays the
endless masts, with their yards, poles, and rigging, gave this great gap

in the heart of the town the look of a dead forest. Above this leafless
forest the gulls were wheeling, and watching to pounce, like a falling
stone, on any scraps flung overboard; a sailor boy, fixing a pulley to a
cross-beam, looked as if he had gone up there bird's- nesting.
"Will you dine with us without any sort of ceremony, just that we may
end the day together?" said Mme. Roland to her friend.
"To be sure I will, with pleasure; I accept equally without ceremony. It
would be dismal to go home and be alone this evening."
Pierre, who had heard, and who was beginning to be restless under the
young woman's indifference, muttered to himself: "Well, the widow is
taking root now, it would seem." For some days past he had spoken of
her as