for
dinner, _n'est-ce pas_? There is no fish so fresh, and so well-flavored,
as the fish of our own catching."

"Will madame and mam'selle do us the honor to taste our fish and share
our modest dinner?" said Mueller, leaning forward in his seat in the
stern, and delivering his invitation close into the old lady's ear.

To which _ma tante_, with a readiness of hearing for which no one would
have given her credit, replied:--

"But--but monsieur is very polite--if we should not be inconveniencing
these gentlemen"....

"We shall be charmed, madame--we shall be honored!"

"_Eh bien!_ with pleasure, then--Marie, my child, thank the gentlemen
for their amiable invitation."

I was thunderstruck. I looked at Mueller to see if he had suddenly gone
out of his senses. Mam'selle Marie, however, was infinitely amused.

"_Fi donc!_ monsieur," she said. "You have no fish. I heard the other
gentleman say so."

"The other gentleman, mam'selle," replied Mueller, "is an Englishman, and
troubled with the spleen. You must not mind anything he says."

Troubled with the spleen! I believe myself to be as even-tempered and as
ready to fall in with a joke as most men; but I should have liked at
that moment to punch Franz Mueller's head. Gracious heavens! into what a
position he had now brought us! What was to be done? How were we to get
out of it? It was now just seven; and we had already been upon the water
for more than an hour. What should we have to pay for the boat? And when
we had paid for the boat, how much money should we have left to pay for
the dinner? Not for our own dinners--ah, no! For _ma tante's_ dinner
(and _ma tante_ had a hungry eye) and for _la petite_ Marie's dinner;
and _la petite_ Marie, plump, rosy, and well-liking, looked as if she
might have a capital appetite upon occasion! Should we have as much as
two and a half francs? I doubted it. And then, in the absence of a
miracle, what could we do with two and a half francs, if we had them? A
miserable sum!--convertible, perhaps, into as much bouilli, bread and
cheese, and thin country wine as might have satisfied our own hunger in
a prosaic and commonplace way; but for four persons, two of
them women!...

And this was not the worst of it. I thought I knew Mueller well enough by
this time to feel that he would entirely dismiss this minor
consideration of ways and means; that he would order the dinner as
recklessly as if we had twenty francs apiece in our pockets; an