e, 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, and 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 be doing something foolish.'

"And she whispered to me as if she had put a red-hot iron under my nose:
'You are not a man. Now you are going to run away, and surrender your
place! Off you go, Bazaine!'

"Well, I felt that, but yet I did not move, while the other fellow
pulled out a bream, oh! I never saw such a large one before, never! And
then my wife began to talk aloud, as if she were thinking, and you can
see her trickery. She said: 'That is what one might call stolen fish,
seeing that we baited the place ourselves. At any rate, they ought to
give us back the money we have spent on bait.'

"Then the fat woman in the cotton dress said in turn: 'Do you mean to
call us thieves, Madame?' And they began to explain, and then they came
to words. Oh! Lord! those creatures know some good ones. They shouted
so loud, that our two witnesses, who were on the other bank, began to
call out by way of a joke: 'Less noise over there; you will prevent your
husbands from fishing.'

"The fact is that neither of us moved any more than if we had been two
tree-stumps. We remained there, with our noses over the water, as if we
had heard nothing, but by Jove, we heard all the same. 'You are a mere
liar.--You are no