time trying to get in, between the sentences,
his account of another dinner, given by a friend of his at Mendon, after
which every guest was ill for a fortnight. Mme. Rosemilly, Jean, and
his mother were planning an excursion to breakfast at Saint Jouin, from
which they promised themselves the greatest pleasure; and Pierre was
only sorry that he had not dined alone in some pot-house by the sea, so
as to escape all this noise and laughter and glee which fretted him. He
was wondering how he 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 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