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