The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII | Page 9

by occasionally
asking his opinion. She seemed to guess that Jean's views would
support her own, while 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 gleam of an accuser drawing up an indictment
against woman--all women, poor weak things.
Never till his sons came home had M. Roland invited her to join his
fishing expeditions, nor had he ever taken his wife; for he liked to put
off before daybreak, with his ally, Captain Beausire, a master mariner
retired, whom he had first met on the quay at high tides and with whom
he had struck up an intimacy, and the old sailor Papagris, known as
Jean Bart, in whose charge the boat was left.

But one evening of the week before, as Mme. Rosémilly, who had been
dining with them, remarked, "It must be great fun to go out fishing,"
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."
"Are you the woman to be ready to start at five in the morning?"
She exclaimed in horror:
"No, indeed: that is too much."
He was disappointed and chilled, suddenly doubting her true vocation.
However, he said:
"At what hour can you be ready?"
"Well--at nine?"
"Not before?"
"No, not before. Even that is very early."
The old fellow hesitated; he certainly would catch nothing, for when
the sun has warmed the sea the fish bite no more; but the two brothers
had eagerly pressed the scheme, and organized and arranged everything
there and then.
So on the following Tuesday the Pearl had dropped anchor under the
white rocks of Cape la Héve; they had fished till mid-day, then they
had slept awhile, and then fished again without catching anything; and
then it was that father Roland, perceiving, rather late, that all that Mme.
Rosémilly really enjoyed and cared for was the sail on the sea, and

seeing that his lines hung motionless, had uttered in a spirit of
unreasonable annoyance, that vehement "Tschah!" which applied as
much to the pathetic widow as to the creatures he could not catch.
Now he contemplated the spoil--his fish--with the joyful thrill of a
miser; and seeing as he looked up at the sky that the sun was getting
low: "Well, boys," said he, "suppose we turn homeward."
The young men hauled in their lines, coiled them up, cleaned the hooks
and stuck them into corks, and sat waiting.
Roland stood up to look out like a captain:
"No wind," said he. "You will have to pull, young 'uns."
And suddenly extending one arm to the northward, he exclaimed:
"Here comes the packet from Southampton."
Away over the level sea, spread out like a blue sheet, vast and sheeny
and shot with flame and gold, an inky cloud was visible against the
rosy sky in the quarter to which he pointed, and below it they could
make out the hull of the steamer, which looked tiny at such a distance.
And to the southward other wreaths of smoke, numbers of them, could
be seen, all converging toward the Havre pier, now scarcely visible as a
white streak with the light-house, upright, like a horn, at the end of it.
Roland asked: "Is not the Normandie due to-day?" And Jean replied:
"Yes, to-day."
"Give me my glass. I fancy I see her out there."
The father pulled out the copper tube, adjusted it to his eye, sought the
speck, and then, delighted to have seen it, exclaimed:
"Yes, yes, there she is. I know her two funnels. Would you like to look,
Mme. Rosémilly?"

She took the telescope and directed it toward the Atlantic horizon,
without being able, however, to find the vessel, for she could
distinguish nothing--nothing but blue, with a colored halo round it, a
circular rainbow--and then all manner of queer things, winking eclipses
which made her feel sick.
She said as she returned the glass:
"I never could see with that thing. It used to put my husband in quite a
rage; he would stand for hours at the window watching the ships pass."
Old Roland, much put out, retorted:
"Then it must be some defect in your eye, for my glass is a very good
one."
Then he offered it to his wife.
"Would you like to look?"
"No, thank you. I know beforehand that I could not see through it."
Mme. Roland, a woman of eight-and-forty, but who did not look it,
seemed to be enjoying this excursion and this waning day more