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.
"You can see the house from here. It belonged to him. Jacquette Brouin
and Cambremer had only one son, a lad they loved--how shall I say?
--well, they loved him like an only child, they were mad about him.
How many times we have seen them at fairs buying all sorts of things
to please him; it was out of all reason the way they indulged him, and
so folks told them. The little Cambremer, seeing that he was never
thwarted, grew as vicious as a red ass. When they told pere Cambremer,
'Your son has nearly killed little such a one,' he would laugh and
say: 'Bah! he'll be a bold sailor; he'll command the king's fleets.'
--Another time, 'Pierre Cambremer, did you know your lad very nearly
put out the eye of the little Pougard girl?'--'Ha! he'll like the
girls,' said Pierre. Nothing troubled him. At ten years old the little
cur fought everybody, and amused himself with cutting the hens' necks
off and ripping up the pigs; in fact, you might say he wallowed in
blood. 'He'll be a famous soldier,' said Cambremer, 'he's got the taste
of blood.' Now, you see," said the fisherman, "I can look back and
remember all that--and Cambremer, too," he added, after a pause. "By
the time Jacques Cambremer was fifteen or sixteen years of age he had
come to be--what shall I say?--a shark. He amused himself at Guerande,
and was after the girls at Savenay. Then he wanted money. He robbed
his mother, who didn't dare say a word to his father. Cambremer was an
honest man who'd have tramped fifty miles to return two sous that any
one had overpaid him on a bill. At last, one day the mother was robbed
of everything. During one of his father's fishing-trips Jacques
carried off all she had, furniture, pots and pans, sheets, linen,