“Madame—delightful time—many thanks—”
She answered:
“That’s all right, but don’t you bring him home intoxicated, or you will be sorry!”
And they set out.
They walked to the Seine and stopped in front of an island covered with poplar-trees.
Boivin looked at the river tenderly and squeezed his friend’s arm.
“In a week we’ll be there, Monsieur Patissot.”
“Where shall we be, Monsieur Boivin?”
“Why, at the beginning of the fishing season: it opens on the fifteenth.”
Patissot felt a slight tremor pass over him, like the commotion which is felt on seeing for the first time the woman who is to be one’s fate. He replied:
“Ah! so you fish, Monsieur Boivin?”
“Do I fish, Monsieur? Why, it’s my only delight!”
Patissot then questioned him closely. Boivin named all the fish that frolicked in that dirty water. And Patissot believed that he saw them. Boivin designated the various baits, the hooks, the places and the time favorable to catching each species. And Patissot felt that he knew more about fishing than Boivin himself. They agreed to meet for the overture on the following Sunday, for Patissot’s special benefit. He was delighted to have found such an experienced initiator.
They dined in a sort of dark hovel patronized by the fishermen and the rabble of the place. At the door Boivin thought fit to remark:
“It doesn’t look like much, but it’s very nice inside.”
They seated themselves at a table. After the second glass of claret Patissot knew why Madame Boivin gave her spouse reddened water; the little man was losing his head; he talked at random, got up, wanted to play tricks, acted as peacemaker in a drunken quarrel, and would have been killed, as well as Patissot, had not the owner of the place interfered. After the coffee he was so intoxicated that he could not stand, despite his friend’s efforts to keep him from drinking; and when they departed Patissot had to guide his faltering steps.
They walked across the meadows, and after wandering around for a long time in the dark, lost their way. Suddenly they found themselves amid a thicket of tall sticks that reached to their noses.
It was a vineyard. They felt around a long time, unsteady, maudlin, and unable to find a way out. At last Boivin fell over a stick that scratched his face, and he sat down on the ground yelling at the top of his voice with a drunkard’s obstinacy, while Patissot, distracted, shouted for assistance.
A belated peasant went to their rescue and put them on the right road.
But as they approached Boivin’s home Patissot became timorous. At last they arrived at the door; it was suddenly flung open and Madame Boivin, like the furies of old, appeared with a light in her hand. As soon as she saw her husband she jumped at Patissot, screaming:
“Ohl you scoundrel! I knew that you would get him drunk.”
The poor fellow was seized with an insane terror, and, dropping his friend in the slimy gutter of the passageway, he ran as fast as his legs would carry him toward the railway station.
IV
Fishing
The day before he was to throw a bait into the river for the first time in his life, Monsieur Patissot bought for eighty centimes a pamphlet entitled, “The Perfect Fisherman.”
Besides gleaning from it much useful information, he was greatly impressed with the style, and learned by heart the following excerpt:
In a word, if you wish to succeed, and be able to fish right and left, up or down stream, without care or precautions of any kind, and with that conquering air that admits of no defeat, then fish before, during, and after a thunderstorm, when the sky opens and is streaked with lightning and the earth echoes with the rolling of thunder; it is then that the fish, either from terror or avidity, forget their habits in a sort of universal and turbulent flight.
In the confusion resulting, you may follow or neglect all the signs that indicate favorable conditions, for you are sure of marching to victory.
In order to be able to catch fish of different sizes, he bought three poles so constructed as to simulate walking-sticks in the city; on the river, a slight jerk would transform them into fishing-rods. He purchased the smaller hooks for fry and with sizes 12 and 15 he hoped to fill his basket with carp and flounders. He refrained from buying groundworms, because he knew that he could find them everywhere, but he secured a provision of sandworms.
In the evening, at home, he gazed at them with interest. The hideous creatures swarmed in their bran bath as in putrefied meat. Patissot began to practice fastening them to the hooks. He took one out with disgust, but had hardly laid it on the sharp end of the curved steel before it burst and spilled its insides. He tried to bait a hook at least twenty times without success, and probably would have continued all night had he not feared to exhaust his supply.
He started next morning on the first train. The station was crowded with people armed with fishing-rods, some, like Patissot’s, looking like walking-sticks, while others, all in one piece, pointed their slender ends toward heaven, forming as it were, a forest of reeds that clashed and mingled like swords, or swayed like masts above an ocean of broad-brimmed straw hats.
When the locomotive pulled out of the station fishing-rods were sticking out of every window of the train, which looked like a huge spiked caterpillar unrolling itself through the fields.
The passengers got out at Courbevoie, and almost fought to get seats in the diligence for Bezons. A crowd of fishermen swung themselves on top of the omnibus, and as they were holding their rods in their hands, the conveyance suddenly took on the appearance of a large porcupine.
All along the road men were going in one direction, looking like pilgrims on the way to an unknown Jerusalem. They walked hurriedly carrying tin boxes fastened on their backs—their swaying rods resembling the
