engaged to dine with them in honour of the good news. Vermouth and
absinthe had been served to whet their appetites, and every one had been
at once put into good spirits. Captain Beausire, a funny little man who
had become quite round by dint of being rolled about at sea, and whose
ideas also seemed to have been worn round, like the pebbles of a beach,
while he laughed with his throat full of _r_'s, looked upon life as a
capital thing, in which everything that might turn up was good to take.
He clinked his glass against father Roland's, while Jean was offering
two freshly filled glasses to the ladies. Mme. Rosemilly refused, till
Captain Beausire, who had known her husband, cried:

"Come, come, madame, _bis repetita placent_, as we say in the lingo,
which is as much as to say two glasses of vermouth never hurt any one.
Look at me; since I have left the sea, in this way I give myself an
artificial roll or two every day before dinner; I add a little pitching
after my coffee, and that keeps things lively for the rest of the
evening. I never rise to a hurricane, mind you, never, never. I am too
much afraid of damage."

Roland, whose nautical mania was humoured by the old mariner, laughed
heartily, his face flushed already and his eye watery from the absinthe.
He had a burly shop-keeping stomach--nothing but stomach--in which the
rest of his body seemed to have got stowed away; the flabby paunch of
men who spend their lives sitting, and who have neither thighs, nor
chest, nor arms, nor neck; the seat of their chairs having accumulated
all their substance in one spot. Beausire, on the contrary, though short
and stout, was as tight as an egg and as hard as a cannon-ball.

Mme. Roland had not emptied her glass and was gazing at her son Jean
with sparkling eyes; happiness had brought a colour to her cheeks.