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A Drama on the Seashore ...................................................................................................................................1

Honore de Balzac .....................................................................................................................................1

Nearly all young men have a compass with which they delight in measuring the future. When their will is

equal to the breadth of the angle at which they open it the world is theirs. But this phenomenon of the inner

life takes place only at a certain age. That age, which for all men lies between twentytwo and twentyeight,

is the period of great thoughts, of fresh conceptions, because it is the age of immense desires. After that age,

short as the seedtime, comes that of execution. There are, as it were, two youths,the youth of belief, the

youth of action; these are often commingled in men whom Nature has favored and who, like Caesar, like

I was measuring how long a time it might take a thought to develop. Compass in hand, standing on a rock

some hundred fathoms above the ocean, the waves of which were breaking on the reef below, I surveyed my

future, filling it with books as an engineer or builder traces on vacant ground a palace or a fort.

The sea was beautiful; I had just dressed after bathing; and I awaited Pauline, who was also bathing, in a

granite cove floored with fine sand, the most coquettish bathroom that Nature ever devised for her

waterfairies. The spot was at the farther end of Croisic, a dainty little peninsula in Brittany; it was far from

the port, and so inaccessible that the coastguard seldom thought it necessary to pass that way. To float in

ether after floating on the wave!ah! who would not have floated on the future as I did! Why was I

thinking? Whence comes evil?who knows! Ideas drop into our hearts or into our heads without consulting

us. No courtesan was ever more capricious nor more imperious than conception is to artists; we must grasp it,

Astride upon my thought, like Astolphe on his hippogriff, I was galloping through worlds, suiting them to my

fancy. Presently, as I looked about me to find some omen for the bold productions my wild imagination was

urging me to undertake, a pretty cry, the cry of a woman issuing refreshed and joyous from a bath, rose above

the murmur of the rippling fringes as their flux and reflux marked a white line along the shore. Hearing that

note as it gushed from a soul, I fancied I saw among the rocks the foot of an angel, who with outspread wings

cried out to me, "Thou shalt succeed!" I came down radiant, light hearted; I bounded like a pebble rolling

I did not answer; my eyes were moist. The night before, Pauline had understood my sorrows, as she now

understood my joy, with the magical sensitiveness of a harp that obeys the variations of the atmosphere.

Human life has glorious moments. Together we walked in silence along the beach. The sky was cloudless, the

sea without a ripple; others might have thought them merely two blue surfaces, the one above the other, but

wewe who heard without the need of words, we who could evoke between these two infinitudes the

illusions that nourish youth, we pressed each other's hands at every change in the sheet of water or the

sheets of air, for we took those slight phenomena as the visible translation of our double thought. Who has

never tasted in wedded love that moment of illimitable joy when the soul seems freed from the trammels of

flesh, and finds itself restored, as it were, to the world whence it came? Are there not hours when feelings

clasp each other and fly upward, like children taking hands and running, they scarce know why? It was thus

At the moment when the village roofs began to show like a faint gray line on the horizon, we met a

fisherman, a poor man returning to Croisic. His feet were bare; his linen trousers ragged round the bottom;

his shirt of common sailcloth, and his jacket tatters. This abject poverty pained us; it was like a discord amid

our harmonies. We looked at each other, grieving mutually that we had not at that moment the power to dip

into the treasury of Aboul Casem. But we saw a splendid lobster and a crab fastened to a string which the

fisherman was dangling in his right hand, while with the left he held his tackle and his net.

We accosted him with the intention of buying his haul,an idea which came to us both, and was expressed

in a smile, to which I responded by a slight pressure of the arm I held and drew toward my heart. It was one

of those nothings of which memory makes poems when we sit by the fire and recall the hour when that

nothing moved us, and the place where it did so,a mirage the effects of which have never been noted

down, though it appears on the objects that surround us in moments when life sits lightly and our hearts are

full. The loveliest scenery is that we make ourselves. What man with any poesy in him does not remember

some mere mass of rock, which holds, it may be, a greater place in his memory than the celebrated

landscapes of other lands, sought at great cost. Beside that rock, tumultuous thoughts! There a whole life

evolved; there all fears dispersed; there the rays of hope descended to the soul! At this moment, the sun,

sympathizing with these thoughts of love and of the future, had cast an ardent glow upon the savage flanks of

the rock; a few wild mountain flowers were visible; the stillness and the silence magnified that rugged pile,

really sombre, though tinted by the dreamer, and beautiful beneath its scanty vegetation, the warm

chamomile, the Venus' tresses with their velvet leaves. Oh, lingering festival; oh, glorious decorations; oh,

happy exaltation of human forces! Once already the lake of Brienne had spoken to me thus. The rock of

Croisic may be perhaps the last of these my joys. If so, what will become of Pauline?

"Yes, monsieur," he replied, stopping and turning toward us the swarthy face of those who spend whole days

That face was an emblem of long resignation, of the patience of a fisherman and his quiet ways. The man had

a voice without harshness, kind lips, evidently no ambition, and something frail and puny about him. Any

"Monsieur, the crab is much more delicate eating. Besides, it's as malicious as a monkey, and it seldom lets

"You shall not have it!" I said to her, laughing. "I'll pay ten francs; we should count the emotions in."

I yielded. We were not rich enough at that moment to bid higher. Our poor fisherman did not know whether

to be angry at a hoax, or to go mad with joy; we drew him from his quandary by giving him the name of our

"Do you earn enough to live on?" I asked the man, in order to discover the cause of his evident penury.

"With great hardships, and always poorly," he replied. "Fishing on the coast, when one hasn't a boat or

deepsea nets, nothing but pole and line, is a very uncertain business. You see we have to wait for the fish, or

the shellfish; whereas a real fisherman puts out to sea for them. It is so hard to earn a living this way that I'm

the only man in these parts who fishes alongshore. I spend whole days without getting anything. To catch a

crab, it must go to sleep, as this one did, and a lobster must be silly enough to stay among the rocks.

"Oh, eleven or twelve sous. I could do with that if I were alone; but I have got my old father to keep, and he

At these words, said simply, Pauline and I looked at each other without a word; then I asked,

He cast upon us one of the most lamentable glances that I ever saw as he answered,

"If I had a wife I must abandon my father; I could not feed him and a wife and children too."

"Well, my poor lad, why don't you try to earn more at the salt marshes, or by carrying the salt to the harbor?"

"Ah, monsieur, I couldn't do that work three months. I am not strong enough, and if I died my father would

have to beg. I am forced to take a business which only needs a little knack and a great deal of patience."

"Oh, monsieur, we eat cakes made of buckwheat, and barnacles which I get off the rocks."

"I went once to Guerande to draw for the conscription; and I went to Savenay to the messieurs who measure

for the army. If I had been half an inch taller they'd have made me a soldier. I should have died of my first

I had thought out many dramas; Pauline was accustomed to great emotions beside a man so suffering as

myself; well, never had either of us listened to words so moving as these. We walked on in silence,

measuring, each of us, the silent depths of that obscure life, admiring the nobility of a devotion which was

ignorant of itself. The strength of that feebleness amazed us; the man's unconscious generosity belittled us. I

saw that poor being of instinct chained to that rock like a galleyslave to his ball; watching through twenty

years for shellfish to earn a living, and sustained in his patience by a single sentiment. How many hours

wasted on a lonely shore! How many hopes defeated by a change of weather! He was hanging there to a

granite rock, his arm extended like that of an Indian fakir, while his father, sitting in their hovel, awaited, in

silence and darkness, a meal of the coarsest bread and shellfish, if the sea permitted.

"Well, you shall drink it today,you and your father; and we will send you some white bread."

"We will give you your dinner if you will show us the way along the shore to Batz, where we wish to see the

"With pleasure," he said. "Go straight before you, along the path you are now on, and I will follow you when

We nodded consent, and he ran off joyfully toward the town. This meeting maintained us in our previous

"Poor man!" said Pauline, with that accent which removes from the compassion of a woman all that is

mortifying in human pity, "ought we not to feel ashamed of our happiness in presence of such misery?"

"Nothing is so cruelly painful as to have powerless desires," I answered. "Those two poor creatures, the father

and son, will never know how keen our sympathy for them is, any more than the world will know how

"Oh, how poor this country is!" she said, pointing to a field enclosed by a dry stone wall, which was covered

with droppings of cow's dung applied symmetrically. "I asked a peasantwoman who was busy sticking them

on, why it was done; she answered that she was making fuel. Could you have imagined that when those

patches of dung have dried, human beings would collect them, store them, and use them for fuel? During the

winter, they are even sold as peat is sold. And what do you suppose the best dressmaker in the place can

"But see," I said, "how the winds from the sea bend or destroy everything. There are no trees. Fragments of

wreckage or old vessels that are broken up are sold to those who can afford to buy; for costs of transportation

are too heavy to allow them to use the firewood with which Brittany abounds. This region is fine for none but

noble souls; persons without sentiments could never live here; poets and barnacles alone should inhabit it. All

that ever brought a population to this rock were the saltmarshes and the factory which prepares the salt. On

We had now passed the town, and had reached the species of desert which separates Croisic from the village

of Batz. Imagine, my dear uncle, a barren track of miles covered with the glittering sand of the seashore. Here

and there a few rocks lifted their heads; you might have thought them gigantic animals couchant on the

dunes. Along the coast were reefs, around which the water foamed and sparkled, giving them the appearance

of great white roses, floating on the liquid surface or resting on the shore. Seeing this barren tract with the

ocean on one side, and on the other the arm of the sea which runs up between Croisic and the rocky shore of

Guerande, at the base of which lay the salt marshes, denuded of vegetation, I looked at Pauline and asked her

if she felt the courage to face the burning sun and the strength to walk through sand.

"I have boots," she said. "Let us go," and she pointed to the tower of Batz, which arrested the eye by its

immense pile placed there like a pyramid; but a slender, delicately outlined pyramid, a pyramid so poetically

ornate that the imagination figured in it the earliest ruin of a great Asiatic city.

We advanced a few steps and sat down upon the portion of a large rock which was still in the shade. But it

was now eleven o'clock, and the shadow, which ceased at our feet, was disappearing rapidly.

"How beautiful this silence!" she said to me; "and how the depth of it is deepened by the rhythmic quiver of

"If you will give your understanding to the three immensities which surround us, the water, the air, and the

sands, and listen exclusively to the repeating sounds of flux and reflux," I answered her, "you will not be able

to endure their speech; you will think it is uttering a thought which will annihilate you. Last evening, at

"Oh! let us talk, let us talk," she said, after a long pause. "I understand it. No orator was ever more terrible. I

think," she continued, presently, "that I perceive the causes of the harmonies which surround us. This

landscape, which has but three marked colors, the brilliant yellow of the sands, the blue of the sky, the

even green of the sea,is grand without being savage; it is immense, yet not a desert; it is monotonous, but it

"Women alone know how to render such impressions," I said. "You would be the despair of a poet, dear soul

"The extreme heat of midday casts into those three expressions of the infinite an allpowerful color," said

We now heard the hurried steps of our guide; he had put on his Sunday clothes. We addressed a few ordinary

words to him; he seemed to think that our mood had changed, and with that reserve that comes of misery, he

kept silence. Though from time to time we pressed each other's hands that we might feel the mutual flow of

our ideas and impressions, we walked along for half an hour in silence, either because we were oppressed by

the heat which rose in waves from the burning sands, or because the difficulty of walking absorbed our

attention. Like children, we held each other's hands; in fact, we could hardly have made a dozen steps had we

walked arm in arm. The path which led to Batz was not so much as traced. A gust of wind was enough to

efface all tracks left by the hoofs of horses or the wheels of carts; but the practised eye of our guide could

recognize by scraps of mud or the dung of cattle the road that crossed that desert, now descending towards

the sea, then rising landward according to either the fall of the ground or the necessity of rounding some

"We will stop to rest over there," I said, pointing to a promontory of rocks sufficiently high to make it

The fisherman, who heard me and saw the direction in which I pointed, shook his head, and said,

"Some one is there. All those who come from the village of Batz to Croisic, or from Croisic to Batz, go round

Our guide answered only by drawing a deep breath, which redoubled our curiosity.

"I do not say so," replied the fisherman, hastily. "I only say that he who is there will say nothing to you, and

Never were two syllables pronounced in so tragic a manner. At this moment we were about fifty feet from the

rocky eminence, which extended a long reef into the sea. Our guide took a path which led him round the base

of the rock. We ourselves continued our way over it; but Pauline took my arm. Our guide hastened his steps

This circumstance excited our curiosity, which soon became so keen that our hearts were beating as if with a

sense of fear. In spite of the heat of the day, and the fatigue caused by toiling through the sand, our souls were

still surrendered to the softness unspeakable of our exquisite ecstasy. They were filled with that pure pleasure

which cannot be described unless we liken it to the joy of listening to enchanting music, Mozart's "Audiamo

mio ben," for instance. When two pure sentiments blend together, what is that but two sweet voices singing?

To be able to appreciate properly the emotion that held us, it would be necessary to share the state of half

sensuous delight into which the events of the morning had plunged us. Admire for a long time some pretty

dove with iridescent colors, perched on a swaying branch above a spring, and you will give a cry of pain

when you see a hawk swooping down upon her, driving its steel claws into her breast, and bearing her away

with murderous rapidity. When we had advanced a step or two into an open space which lay before what

seemed to be a grotto, a sort of esplanade placed a hundred feet above the ocean, and protected from its fury

by buttresses of rock, we suddenly experienced an electrical shudder, something resembling the shock of a

We saw, sitting on a vast granite boulder, a man who looked at us. His glance, like that of the flash of a

cannon, came from two bloodshot eyes, and his stoical immobility could be compared only to the immutable

granite masses that surrounded him. His eyes moved slowly, his body remaining rigid as though he were

petrified. Then, having cast upon us that look which struck us like a blow, he turned his eyes once more to the

limitless ocean, and gazed upon it, in spite of its dazzling light, as eagles gaze at the sun, without lowering his

eyelids. Try to remember, dear uncle, one of those old oaks, whose knotty trunks, from which the branches

have been lopped, rise with weird power in some lonely place, and you will have an image of this man. Here

was a ruined Herculean frame, the face of an Olympian Jove, destroyed by age, by hard sea toil, by grief, by

common food, and blackened as it were by lightning. Looking at his hard and hairy hands, I saw that the

sinews stood out like cords of iron. Everything about him denoted strength of constitution. I noticed in a

corner of the grotto a quantity of moss, and on a sort of ledge carved by nature on the granite, a loaf of bread,

which covered the mouth of an earthenware jug. Never had my imagination, when it carried me to the deserts

where early Christian anchorites spent their lives, depicted to my mind a form more grandly religious nor

more horribly repentant than that of this man. You, who have a lifelong experience of the confessional, dear

uncle, you may never, perhaps, have seen so awful a remorse,remorse sunk in the waves of prayer, the

ceaseless supplication of a mute despair. This fisherman, this mariner, this hard, coarse Breton, was sublime

through some hidden emotion. Had those eyes wept? That hand, moulded for an unwrought statue, had it

struck? That ragged brow, where savage honor was imprinted, and on which strength had left vestiges of the

gentleness which is an attribute of all true strength, that forehead furrowed with wrinkles, was it in harmony

with the heart within? Why was this man in the granite? Why was the granite in the man? Which was the

man, which was the granite? A world of fancies came into our minds. As our guide had prophesied, we

passed in silence, rapidly; when he met us he saw our emotion of mingled terror and astonishment, but he

You can imagine the movement with which our two heads turned at once to our guide. He was a

simplehearted fellow; he understood at once our mute inquiry, and here follows what he told us; I shall try

"Madame, folks from Croisic and those from Batz think this man is guilty of something, and is doing a

penance ordered by a famous rector to whom he confessed his sin somewhere beyond Nantes. Others think

that Cambremer, that's his name, casts an evil fate on those who come within his air, and so they always look

which way the wind is before they pass this rock. If it's nor'westerly they wouldn't go by, no, not if their

errand was to get a bit of the true cross; they'd go back, frightened. Othersthey are the rich folks of

Croisicthey say that Cambremer has made a vow, and that's why people call him the Man of the Vow. He

is there night and day, he never leaves the place. All these sayings have some truth in them. See there," he

continued, turning round to show us a thing we had not remarked, "look at that wooden cross he has set up

there, to the left, to show that he has put himself under the protection of God and the holy Virgin and the

saints. But the fear that people have of him keeps him as safe as if he were guarded by a troop of soldiers. He

has never said one word since he locked himself up in the open air in this way; he lives on bread and water,

which is brought to him every morning by his brother's daughter, a little lass about twelve years old to whom

he has left his property, a pretty creature, gentle as a lamb, a nice little girl, so pleasant. She has such blue

eyes, long as THAT," he added, marking a line on his thumb, "and hair like the cherubim. When you ask her:

'Tell me, Perotte' (That's how we say Pierette in these parts," he remarked, interrupting himself; "she is vowed

to Saint Pierre; Cambremer is named Pierre, and he was her godfather)'Tell me, Perotte, what does your

uncle say to you?''He says nothing to me, nothing.''Well, then, what does he do to you?' 'He kisses me

on the forehead, Sundays.''Are you afraid of him?''Ah, no, no; isn't he my godfather? he wouldn't have

anybody but me bring him his food.' Perotte declares that he smiles when she comes; but you might as well

"But," I said to him, "you excite our curiosity without satisfying it. Do you know what brought him there?

"Eh, monsieur, there's no one but my father and I who know the real truth. My late mother was servant in the

family of a lawyer to whom Cambremer told all by order of the priest, who wouldn't give him absolution until

he had done soat least, that's what the folks of the port say. My poor mother overheard Cambremer without

trying to; the lawyer's kitchen was close to the office, and that's how she heard. She's dead, and so is the

lawyer. My mother made us promise, my father and I, not to talk about the matter to the folks of the

neighborhood; but I can tell you my hair stood on end the night she told us the tale."

"Pierre Cambremer, whom you have seen there, is the eldest of the Cambremers, who from father to son have

always been sailors; their name says itthe sea bends under them. Pierre was a deepsea 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

lovedhow 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 thatand Cambremer, too," he added, after a pause. "By the time Jacques

Cambremer was fifteen or sixteen years of age he had come to bewhat 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 fishingtrips 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 himnot 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,

"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

"'If you do not conduct yourself properly at home with your mother and me, and go fishing, and behave like

"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 SaintNazaire 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 this time cost them so much

that they were halfruined, and that was hard for folks who once had twelve thousand francs, and who owned

their island. No one ever knew what Cambremer paid at Nantes to get his son away from there. Bad luck

seemed to follow the family. Troubles fell upon Cambremer's brother, he needed help. Pierre said, to console

him, that Jacques and Perotte (the brother's daughter) could be married. Then, to help Joseph Cambremer to

earn his bread, Pierre took him with him afishing; for the poor man was now obliged to live by his daily

labor. His wife was dead of the fever, and money was owing for Perotte's nursing. The wife of Pierre

Cambremer owed about one hundred francs to divers persons for the little girl,linen, clothes, and what

not,and it so chanced that she had sewed a bit of Spanish gold into her mattress for a nest egg toward

paying off that money. It was wrapped in paper, and on the paper was written by her: 'For Perotte.' Jacquette

Brouin had had a fine education; she could write like a clerk, and had taught her son to write too. I can't tell

you how it was that the villain scented the gold, stole it, and went off to Croisic to enjoy himself. Pierre

Cambremer, as if it was ordained, came back that day in his boat; as he landed he saw a bit of paper floating

in the water, and he picked it up, looked at it, and carried it to his wife, who fell down as if dead, seeing her

own writing. Cambremer said nothing, but he went to Croisic, and heard that his son was in a billiard room;

"'I told Jacques not to use a piece of gold with which he will pay you; give it back to me, and I'll give you

"The good woman did as she was told. Cambremer took the money and just said 'Good,' and then he went

home. So far, all the town knows that; but now comes what I alone know, though others have always had

some suspicion of it. As I say, Cambremer came home; he told his wife to clean up their chamber, which is

on the lower floor; he made a fire, lit two candles, placed two chairs on one side of the hearth, and a stool on

the other. Then he told his wife to bring him his wedding clothes, and ordered her to put on hers. He dressed

himself. When dressed, he fetched his brother, and told him to watch before the door, and warn him of any

noise on either of the beaches,that of Croisic, or that of Guerande. Then he loaded a gun, and placed it at a

corner of the fireplace. Jacques came home late; he had drunk and gambled till ten o'clock, and had to get

back by way of the Carnouf point. His uncle heard his hail, and he went over and fetched him, but said

"'Sit there,' pointing to the stool. 'You are,' he said, 'before your father and mother, whom you have offended,

"At this Jacques began to howl, for his father's face was all distorted. His mother was rigid as an oar.

"'If you shout, if you stir, if you do not sit still on that stool,' said Pierre, aiming the gun at him, 'I will shoot

"'Here,' said Pierre, 'is a piece of paper which wrapped a Spanish gold piece. That piece of gold was in your

mother's bed; she alone knew where it was. I found that paper in the water when I landed here today. You

gave a piece of Spanish gold this night to Mere Fleurant, and your mother's piece is no longer in her bed.

"Jacques said he had not taken his mother's money, and that the gold piece was one he had brought from

"'Jacques, my child, take care; do not swear if it is not true; you can repent, you can amend; there is still time.'

"'Such language to your mother increases your crime. Come, to the point! Will you swear?'

"'Then,' Pierre said, 'was there upon your gold piece the little cross which the sardine merchant who paid it to

"'Enough,' said Pierre. 'I shall not speak to you of the crimes you have committed before this. I do not choose

that a Cambremer should die on a scaffold. Say your prayers and make haste. A priest is coming to confess

"The mother had left the room; she could not hear her son condemned. After she had gone, Joseph

Cambremer, the uncle, brought in the rector of Piriac, to whom Jacques would say nothing. He was shrewd;

"'Thank you, and excuse us,' said Cambremer to the priest, when he saw Jacques' obstinacy. 'I wished to give

a lesson to my son, and will ask you to say nothing about it. As for you,' he said to Jacques, 'if you do not

amend, the next offence you commit will be your last; I shall end it without confession.'

"And he sent him to bed. The lad thought he could still get round his father. He slept. His father watched.

When he saw that his son was soundly asleep, he covered his mouth with tow, blindfolded him tightly, bound

him hand and foot'He raged, he wept blood,' my mother heard Cambremer say to the lawyer. The mother

"'He is judged and condemned,' replied Pierre; 'you must now help me carry him to the boat.'

"She refused; and Cambremer carried him alone; he laid him in the bottom of the boat, tied a stone to his

neck, took the oars and rowed out of the cove to the open sea, till he came to the rock where he now is. When

the poor mother, who had come up here with her brotherin law, cried out, 'Mercy, mercy!' it was like

throwing a stone at a wolf. There was a moon, and she saw the father casting her son into the water; her son,

the child of her womb, and as there was no wind, she heard BLOUF! and then nothingneither sound nor

bubble. Ah! the sea is a fine keeper of what it gets. Rowing inshore to stop his wife's cries, Cambremer found

her halfdead. The two brothers couldn't carry her the whole distance home, so they had to put her into the

boat which had just served to kill her son, and they rowed back round the tower by the channel of Croisic.

Well, well! the belle Brouin, as they called her, didn't last a week. She died begging her husband to burn that

accursed boat. Oh, he did it! As for him, he became I don't know what; he staggered about like a man who

can't carry his wine. Then he went away and was gone ten days, and after he returned he put himself where

The fisherman related this history rapidly and more simply than I can write it. The lower classes make few

comments as they relate a thing; they tell the fact that strikes them, and present it as they felt it. This tale was

"I shall not go to Batz," said Pauline, when we came to the upper shore of the lake.

We returned to Croisic by the salt marshes, through the labyrinth of which we were guided by our fisherman,

now as silent as ourselves. The inclination of our souls was changed. We were both plunged into gloomy

reflections, saddened by the recital of a drama which explained the sudden presentiment which had seized us

on seeing Cambremer. Each of us had enough knowledge of life to divine all that our guide had not told of

that triple existence. The anguish of those three beings rose up before us as if we had seen it in a drama,

culminating in that of the father expiating his crime. We dared not look at the rock where sat the fatal man

who held the whole countryside in awe. A few clouds dimmed the skies; mists were creeping up from the

horizon. We walked through a landscape more bitterly gloomy than any our eyes had ever rested on, a nature

that seemed sickly, suffering, covered with salty crust, the eczema, it might be called, of earth. Here, the soil

was mapped out in squares of unequal size and shape, all encased with enormous ridges or embankments of

gray earth and filled with water, to the surface of which the salt scum rises. These gullies, made by the hand

of man, are again divided by causeways, along which the laborers pass, armed with long rakes, with which

they drag this scum to the bank, heaping it on platforms placed at equal distances when the salt is fit to

For two hours we skirted the edge of this melancholy checkerboard, where salt has stifled all forms of

vegetation, and where no one ever comes but a few "paludiers," the local name given to the laborers of the

salt marshes. These men, or rather this clan of Bretons, wear a special costume: a white jacket, something like

that of brewers. They marry among themselves. There is no instance of a girl of the tribe having ever married

The horrible aspects of these marshes, these sloughs, the mud of which was systematically raked, the dull

gray earth that the Breton flora held in horror, were in keeping with the gloom that filled our souls. When we

reached a spot where we crossed an arm of the sea, which no doubt serves to feed the stagnant saltpools, we

noticed with relief the puny vegetation which sprouted through the sand of the beach. As we crossed, we saw

Arriving at the hotel, we noticed a billiardtable, and finding that it was the only billiardtable in Croisic, we

made our preparations to leave during the night. The next day we went to Guerande. Pauline was still sad,

and I myself felt a return of that fever of the brain which will destroy me. I was so cruelly tortured by the

"Louis, write it all down; that will change the nature of the fever within you."

So I have written you this narrative, dear uncle; but the shock of such an event has made me lose the

Note: A Drama on the Seashore is also known as A Seaside Tragedy and is referred to by that title in other