"Ah, that's a pity, you must get a better hold," sympathetically interrupted my fisherman, as he proceeded to hoist me higher up on his shoulder. I, or a sack of corn, or a basket of fish, they were all one to this strong back and to these toughened sinews. When he had adjusted his present load at a secure height, above the dashing of the spray, he went on talking. "Yes, when the rich suffer a little it is not such a bad thing, it makes a pleasant change—cela leur distrait. For instance, there is the Princess de L——, there's her villa, close by, with green blinds. She makes little excuses to go over to Havre, just for this—to be carried in the arms like an infant. You should hear her, she shouts and claps her hands! All the beach assembles to see her land. When she is wet she cries for joy. It is so difficult to amuse one's self, it appears, in the great world."
"But, tiens, here we are, I feel the dry sands." I was dropped as lightly on them as if it had been indeed a bunch of feathers my fisherman had been carrying.
And meanwhile, out yonder, across the billows, with airy gesture dramatically executed, our treacherous captain was waving us a theatrical salute. The infant mate was grinning like a gargoyle. They were both delightfully unconscious, apparently, of any event having transpired, during the afternoon's pleasuring, which could possibly tinge the moment of parting with the hues of regret.
"Pour les bagages, mesdames—"
Two dripping, outstretched hands, two berets doffed, two picturesque giants bowing low, with a Frenchman's grace—this, on the Trouville sands, was the last act of this little comedy of our landing on the coast of France.
CHAPTER II.
A SPRING DRIVE.
The Trouville beach was as empty as a desert. No other footfall, save our own, echoed along the broad board walks; this Boulevard des Italiens of the Normandy coast, under the sun of May was a shining pavement that boasted only a company of jelly-fishes as loungers.
Down below was a village, a white cluster of little wooden houses; this was the village of the bath houses. The hotels might have been monasteries deserted and abandoned, in obedience to a nod from Rome or from the home government. Not even a fisherman's net was spread a-drying, to stay the appetite with a sense of past favors done by the sea to mortals more fortunate than we. The whole face of nature was as indifferent as a rich relation grown callous to the voice of entreaty. There was no more hope of man apparently, than of nature, being moved by our necessity; for man, to be moved, must primarily exist, and he was as conspicuously absent on this occasion as Genesis proves him to have been on the fourth day of creation.
Meanwhile we sat still, and took counsel together. The chief of the council suddenly presented himself. It was a man in miniature. The masculine shape, as it loomed up in the distance, gradually separating itself from the background of villa roofs and casino terraces, resolved itself into a figure stolid and sturdy, very brown of leg, and insolent of demeanor—swaggering along as if conscious of there being a full-grown man buttoned up within a boy's ragged coat. The swagger was accompanied by a whistle, whose neat crispness announced habits of leisure and a sense of the refined pleasures of life; for an artistic rendering of an aria from "La Fille de Madame Angot" was cutting the air with clear, high notes.