“For the time.”

“Do you like it?”

“Not particularly.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“For something to turn up.”

“And carry you back to Italy, I suppose?”

“Then you know I have just been there?”

“I know all about it.  Charnot told me of your meeting, and your romantic drive by moonlight.  By the way, he’s come back with a bad cold; did you know that?”

I assumed an air of sympathy: 

“Poor man!  When did he get back?”

“The day before yesterday.  Of course I was the first to hear of it, and we spent yesterday evening together.  It may surprise you, Mouillard, and you may think I exaggerate, but I think Jeanne has come back prettier than she went.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I really do.  That southern sun—­look out, my dear Mouillard, your line is half out of water—­has brought back her roses (they’re brighter than ever, I declare), and the good spirits she had lost, too, poor girl.  She is cheerful again now, as she used to be.  I was very anxious about her at one time.  You know her sad story?”

“Yes.”

“The fellow was a scoundrel, my dear Mouillard, a regular scoundrel!  I never was in favor of the match, myself.  Charnot let himself be drawn into it by an old college friend.  I told him over and over again, ’It’s Jeanne’s dowry he’s after, Charnot—­I’m convinced of it.  He’ll treat Jeanne badly and make her miserable, mark my words.’  But I wasted my breath; he wouldn’t listen to a word.  Anyhow, it’s quite off now.  But it was no slight shock, I can tell you; and it gave me great pain to witness the poor child’s sufferings.”

“You are so kind-hearted, Monsieur Flamaran!”

“It’s not that, Mouillard; but I have known Jeanne ever since she was born.  I watched her grow up, and I loved her when she was still a little mite; she’s as good as my adoptive daughter.  You understand me when I say adoptive.  I do not mean that there exists between us that legal bond in imitation of nature which is permitted by our codes—­’adoptio imitatur naturam’; not that, but that I love her like a daughter—­Sidonie never having presented me with a daughter, nor with a son either, for that matter.”

A cry from Jupille interrupted M. Flamaran: 

“Can’t you hear it rattle?”

The good man was tearing to us, waving his arms like a madman, the folds of his trousers flapping about his thin legs like banners in the wind.

We leaped to our feet, and my first idea, an absurd one enough, was that a rattlesnake was hurrying through the grass to our attack.

I was very far from the truth.  The matter really was a new line, invented by M. Jupille, cast a little further than an ordinary one, and rigged up with a float like a raft, carrying a little clapper.  The fish rang their own knell as they took the hook.

“It’s rattling like mad!” cried Jupille, “and you don’t stir!  I couldn’t have thought it of you, Monsieur Flamaran.”