Perotte declares that he smiles when she comes;but you might as well say the sun shines in a fog;he's as gloomy as a cloudy day.""But,"I said to him,"you excite our curiosity without satisfying it.
Do you know what brought him there?Was it grief,or repentance;is it a mania;is it crime,is it--""Eh,monsieur,there's no one but my father and I who know the real truth.My late mother was servant in the family of a lawyer to whom Cambremer told all by order of the priest,who wouldn't give him absolution until he had done so--at least,that's what the folks of the port say.My poor mother overheard Cambremer without trying to;the lawyer's kitchen was close to the office,and that's how she heard.She's dead,and so is the lawyer.My mother made us promise,my father and I,not to talk about the matter to the folks of the neighborhood;but I can tell you my hair stood on end the night she told us the tale.""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.