The Drowned Man
I
Everyone in Fécamp knew the story of old Mother Patin. She had undoubtedly been unhappy with her man, had old Mother Patin; or her man had beaten her during his lifetime, as a man threshes wheat in his barns.
He was owner of a fishing-smack, and he had married her a long time ago, because she was pleasing, although she was poor.
Patin, a good seaman, but a brute, frequented old Auban’s tavern, where, on ordinary days, he drank four or five brandies, and on days when he had made a good catch, eight or ten, and even more, just for the fun of it, as he said.
The brandy was served to customers by old Auban’s daughter, a pleasant-faced dark-haired girl, who drew custom to the house merely by her good looks, for no one had ever wagged a tongue against her.
When Patin entered the tavern, he was content to look at her and hold her in civil conversation, the easy conversation of a decent fellow. When he had drunk the first brandy, he was already finding her pleasant to look on; at the second, he was winking at her; at the third, he was saying: “Miss Désirée, if you would only …” without ever finishing the sentence; at the fourth, he was trying to hold her by her petticoat to embrace her; and when he had reached the tenth, it was old Auban who served him with the rest.
The old wine-seller, who knew every trick of the trade, used to send Désirée round between the tables to liven up the orders for drinks; and Désirée, who was not old Auban’s daughter for nothing, paraded her petticoat among the drinkers and bandied jests, with a smile on her lips, and a sly twinkle in her eye.
By dint of drinking brandies, Patin grew so familiar with Désirée’s face that he thought of it even at sea, when he was throwing his nets into the water, out on the open sea, on windy nights and calm nights, on moonlit nights and black nights. He thought of it when he was standing at the helm in the after part of his boat, while his four companions slept with their hands on their arms. He saw her always smiling at him, pouring out the tawny brandy with a lift of her shoulders, and then coming towards him, saying:
“There! Is this what you want?”
And by dint of treasuring her so in eye and mind, he reached such a pitch of longing to marry her that, unable to restrain himself from it any longer, he asked her in marriage.
He was rich, owner of his boat, his nets and a house at the foot of the cliff, on the Retenue; while old Auban had nothing. The affair was arranged with much enthusiasm, and the wedding took place as quickly as possible, both parties being, for different reasons, anxious to make it an accomplished fact.
But three days after the marriage was over, Patin was no longer able to imagine in the least how he had come to think Désirée different from other women. He must have been a rare fool to hamper himself with a penniless girl who had wheedled him with her cognac, so she had, with the cognac into which she had put some filthy drug for him.
And he went cursing along the shore, breaking his pipe between his teeth, swearing at his tackle; and having cursed heartily, using every known term of abuse and applying them to everyone he could think of, he spat out such anger as remained in his spleen on the fish and crabs drawn in one of his nets, throwing them all in the baskets to an accompaniment of oaths and foul words.
Then, returning to his house, where he had his wife, old Auban’s daughter, within reach of his tongue and his hand, he was very soon treating her as the lowest of the low. Then, as she listened resignedly, being used to the paternal violence, he became exasperated by her calm, and one evening he knocked her about. After this, his home became a place of terror.
For ten years, nothing was talked of on the Retenue but the beatings Patin inflicted on his wife, and his habit of cursing when he spoke to her, whatever the occasion. He cursed, in fact, in a unique way, with a wealth of vocabulary and a forceful vigour of delivery, possessed by no other man in Fécamp. As soon as his boat, returning from fishing, appeared at the mouth of the harbour, they waited expectantly for the first broadside he would discharge on the pier, from his deck, the moment he saw the white bonnet of his other half.
Standing in the stern, he tacked, his glance fixed ahead and on the sheets when the sea was running high, and in spite of the close attention required by the narrow difficult passage, in spite of the great waves running mountain-high in the narrow gully, he endeavoured to pick out—from the midst of the women waiting in the spray of the breakers for the sailors—his woman, old Auban’s daughter, the pauper wench.
Then, as soon as he had caught sight of her, in spite of the clamour of
