of
common politeness.'

"The little man in linen pretended not to hear, nor his fat lump of a
wife, either."

Here the President interrupted him a second time: "Take care, you are
insulting the widow, Madame Flameche, who is present."

Renard made his excuses: "I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon, my
anger carried me away. Well, not a quarter of an hour had passed when
the little man caught another chub and another almost immediately, and
another five minutes later.

"The tears were in my eyes, and then I knew that Madame Renard was
boiling with rage, for she kept on nagging at me: 'Oh! how horrid!
Don't you see that he is robbing you of your fish? Do you think that
you will catch anything? Not even a frog, nothing whatever. Why, my
hands are burning, just to think of it.'

"But I said to myself: 'Let us wait until twelve o clock. Then this
poaching fellow will go to lunch, and I shall get my place again. As
for me, Monsieur le President, I lunch on the spot every Sunday; we
bring our provisions in 'Delila.' But there! At twelve o'clock, the
wretch produced a fowl out of a newspaper, and while he was eating,
actually he caught another chub!

"Melie and I had a morsel also, just a mouthful, a mere nothing, for
our heart was not in it.

"Then I took up my newspaper, to aid my digestion. Every Sunday I read
the 'Gil Blas' in the shade like that, by the side of the water. It is
Columbine's day, you know, Columbine who writes the articles in the
'Gil Blas.' I generally put Madame Renard into a passion by pretending
to know this Columbine. It is not true, for I do not know her, and have
never seen her, but that does not matter; she writes very well, and
then she says things straight out for a woman. She suits me, and there
are not many of her sort.

"Well, I began to tease my wife, but she got angry immediately, and
very angry, and so I held my tongue. At that moment our two witnesses,
who are present here, Monsieur Ladureau and Monsieur Durdent, appeared
on the other side of the river. We knew each other by sight. The little
man began to fish again, and he caught so many that I trembled with
vexation, and his wife said: 'It is an uncommonly good spot, and we
will come here always, Desire.' As for me, a cold shiver ran down my
back, and Madame Renard kept repeating: 'You are not a man; you have
the blood of a chicken in your veins'; and suddenly I said to her:
'Look here, I would rather go away, or I shall only b