id:--

"'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 carrie