r that lobster?"

"Fifteen sous."

"And the crab?"

"Twenty sous."

"Why so much difference between a lobster and a crab?"

"Monsieur, the crab is much more delicate eating. Besides, it's as
malicious as a monkey, and it seldom lets you catch it."

"Will you let us buy the two for a hundred sous?" asked Pauline.

The man seemed petrified.

"You shall not have it!" I said to her, laughing. "I'll pay ten francs;
we should count the emotions in."

"Very well," she said, "then I'll pay ten francs, two sous."

"Ten francs, ten sous."

"Twelve francs."

"Fifteen francs."

"Fifteen francs, fifty centimes," she said.

"One hundred francs."

"One hundred and fifty francs."

I yielded. We were not rich enough at that moment to bid higher. Our
poor fisherman did not know whether to be angry at a hoax, or to go mad
with joy; we drew him from his quandary by giving him the name of our
landlady and telling him to take the lobster and the crab to her house.

"Do you earn enough to live on?" I asked the man, in order to discover
the cause of his evident penury.

"With great hardships, and always poorly," he replied. "Fishing on the
coast, when one hasn't a boat or deep-sea nets, nothing but pole and
line, is a very uncertain business. You see we have to wait for the
fish, or the shell-fish; whereas a real fisherman puts out to sea for
them. It is so hard to earn a living this way that I'm the only man in
these parts who fishes along-shore. I spend whole days without getting
anything. To catch a crab, it must go to sleep, as this one did, and a
lobster must be silly enough to stay among the rocks. Sometimes after a
high tide the mussels come in and I grab them."

"Well, taking one day with another, how much do you earn?"

"Oh, eleven or twelve sous. I could do with that if I were alone; but I
have got my old father to keep, and he can't do anything, the good man,
because he's blind."

At these words, said simply, Pauline and I looked at each other without
a word; then I asked,--

"Haven't you a wife, or some good friend?"

He cast upon us one of the most lamentable glances that I ever saw as he
answered,--

"If I had a wife I must abandon my father; I could not feed him and a
wife and children too."

"Well, my poor lad, why don't you try to earn more at the salt marshes,
or by carrying the salt to the harbor?"

"Ah, monsieur, I couldn't do that work three months. I am not strong
enough, and if I died