A Drama on the Seashore

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"Well, my man, tell it to us now, and we won't speak of it."

The fisherman looked at us; then he continued:

"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 it--the sea bends under them. Pierre was a deep-sea
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 loved--how 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 that--and Cambremer, too," he added, after a pause. "By
the time Jacques Cambremer was fifteen or sixteen years of age he had
come to be--what 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 fishing-trips 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 him--not 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, he said,--

"'What is all this?'

"The poor woman, more dead than alive, replied:

"'We have been robbed.'

"'Where is Jacques?'

"'Jacques is off amusing himself.'

"No one knew where the scoundrel was.

"'He amuses himself too much,' said Pierre.

"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 did not ask him, 'What have you done?' but he said:--

"'If you do not conduct yourself properly at home with your mother and
me, and go fishing, and behave like an honest man, you and I will have
a reckoning.'

"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 Saint-Nazaire 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 half-ruined, 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 a-fishing; 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; so then he
went to the mistress of the cafe, and said to her:--

"'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 white money in place of
it.'

"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 nothing. When Jacques entered the house, his father said to
him,--

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

"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 you like a dog.'

"Jacques was mute as a fish. The mother said nothing.

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

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

"'I am glad of it,' said Pierre; 'now prove it.'

"'I had it all along.'

"'You did not take the gold piece belonging to your mother?'

"'No.'

"'Will you swear it on your eternal life?'

"He was about to swear; his mother raised her eyes to him, and said:--

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

"And she wept.

"'You are a this and a that,' he said; 'you have always wanted to ruin
me.'

"Cambremer turned white and said,--

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

"'Yes.'

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

"Jacques broke down and wept.

"'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 you.'

"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; he knew
his father would not kill him until he had made his confession.

"'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 threw herself at the
father's feet.

"'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
brother-in-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 nothing--neither 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 half-dead. 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 you saw him, and since he has been there he has never
said one word."

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 made as sharply incisive as the blow of an axe.

"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 handle.

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 any man who was not a paludier.

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 salt-pools, we noticed with relief
the puny vegetation which sprouted through the sand of the beach. As
we crossed, we saw the island on which the Cambremers had lived; but
we turned away our heads.

Arriving at the hotel, we noticed a billiard-table, and finding that
it was the only billiard-table 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 visions that came to
me of those three lives, that Pauline said at last,--

"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 calmness I was beginning to gain
from sea-bathing and our stay in this place.




ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

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

Cambremer, Pierre
Beatrix

Lambert, Louis
Louis Lambert
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Lefebvre
Louis Lambert

Villenoix, Pauline Salomon de
Louis Lambert
The Vicar of Tours