could now
set to work to confide his fears to his brother, and induce him to
renounce the fortune he had already accepted and of which he was
enjoying the intoxicating foretaste. It would be hard on him, no
doubt; but it must be done; he could not hesitate; their mother's
reputation was at stake.

The appearance of an enormous shade-fish threw Roland back on fishing
stories. Beausire told some wonderful tales of adventure on the
Gaboon, at Sainte-Marie, in Madagascar, and above all, off the coasts
of China and Japan, where the fish are as queer-looking as the
natives. And he described the appearance of these fishes--their goggle
gold eyes, their blue or red bellies, their fantastic fins like fans,
their eccentric crescent-shaped tails--with such droll gesticulation
that they all laughed till they cried as they listened.

Pierre alone seemed incredulous, muttering to himself: "True enough,
the Normans are the Gascons of the north!"

After the fish came a vol-au-vent; then a roast fowl, a salad, French
beans with a Pithiviers lark-pie. Mme. Rosemilly's maid-servant helped
to wait on them, and the fun rose with the number of glasses of wine
they drank. When the cork of the first champagne bottle was drawn
with a pop, father Roland, highly excited, imitated the noise with his
tongue and then declared: "I like that noise better than a
pistol-shot."

Pierre, more and more fractious every moment, retorted with a sneer:

"And yet it is perhaps a greater danger for you."

Roland, who was on the point of drinking, set his full glass down on
the table again, and asked:

"Why?"

He had for some time been complaining of his health, of heaviness,
giddiness, frequent and unaccountable discomfort. The doctor replied:

"Because the bullet might very possibly miss you, while the glass of
wine is dead certain to hit you in the stomach."

"And what then?"

"Then it scorches your inside, upsets your nervous system, makes the
circulation sluggish, and leads the way to the apoplectic fit which
always threatens a man of your build."

The jeweler's incipient intoxication had vanished like smoke before
the wind. He looked at his son with fixed, uneasy eyes, trying to
discover whether he was making game of him.

But Beausire exclaimed:

"Oh, these confounded doctors! They all sing the same tune; eat
nothing, drink nothing, never make love or enjoy yourself; it all
plays the devil with your precious health. Well, all I can say