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A Drama on the Seashore by Honoré de Balzac
page 25 of 29 (86%)

"'Thank you, and excuse us,' said Cambremer to the priest, when he saw
Jacques' obstinacy. 'I wished to give a lesson to my son, and will ask
you to say nothing about it. As for you,' he said to Jacques, 'if you
do not amend, the next offence you commit will be your last; I shall
end it without confession.'

"And he sent him to bed. The lad thought he could still get round his
father. He slept. His father watched. When he saw that his son was
soundly asleep, he covered his mouth with tow, blindfolded him
tightly, bound him hand and foot--'He raged, he wept blood,' my mother
heard Cambremer say to the lawyer. The mother threw herself at the
father's feet.

"'He is judged and condemned,' replied Pierre; 'you must now help me
carry him to the boat.'

"She refused; and Cambremer carried him alone; he laid him in the
bottom of the boat, tied a stone to his neck, took the oars and rowed
out of the cove to the open sea, till he came to the rock where he now
is. When the poor mother, who had come up here with her
brother-in-law, cried out, 'Mercy, mercy!' it was like throwing a stone
at a wolf. There was a moon, and she saw the father casting her son
into the water; her son, the child of her womb, and as there was no
wind, she heard _blouf_! and then nothing--neither sound nor bubble. Ah!
the sea is a fine keeper of what it gets. Rowing inshore to stop his
wife's cries, Cambremer found her half-dead. The two brothers couldn't
carry her the whole distance home, so they had to put her into the
boat which had just served to kill her son, and they rowed back round
the tower by the channel of Croisic. Well, well! the belle Brouin, as
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