This is how Renard (Leopold) recounted the drama:
"Good heavens, it is a misfortune of which I was the first victim all the time, and with which my will has nothing to do. The facts are their own commentary, Monsieur le Président. I am an honest man, a hard working man, an upholsterer in the same street for the last sixteen years, known, liked, respected and esteemed by all, as my neighbors have testified, even the porter who is not folâtre every day. I am fond of work, I am fond of saving, I like honest men, and respectable pleasures. That is what has ruined me, so much the worse for me; but as my will had nothing to do with it, I continue to respect myself.
"Every Sunday for the last five years, my wife and I have been to spend the day at Passy. We get fresh air, without counting that we are fond of fishing. Oh! we are as fond of it as we are of small onions. Mélie inspired me with that passion, the jade, and she is more enthusiastic than I am, the scold, seeing that all the mischief in this business is her fault, as you will see immediately.
"I am strong and mild-tempered, without a pennyworth of malice in me. But she! oh! la! la! she looks like nothing, she is short and thin; very well, she does more mischief than a weasel. I do not deny that she has some good qualities; she has some, and very important ones for a man in business. But her character! Just ask about it in the neighborhood, and even the porter's wife, who has just sent me about my business ... she will tell you something about it.
"Every day she used to find fault with my mild temper: 'I would not put up with this! I would not put up with that.' If I had listened to her, Monsieur le Président, I should have had at least three bouts of fisticuffs a month...."
Madame Renard interrupted him: "And for good reasons too; they laugh best who laugh last."
He turned towards her frankly: "Oh! very well, I can charge you, since you were the cause of it."
Then, facing the President again he said:
"I will continue. We used to go to Passy every Saturday evening, so as to be able to begin fishing at daybreak the next morning. It is a habit which has become a second nature with us, as the saying is. Three years ago this summer I discovered a place, oh! such a spot! Oh! there! in the shade, eight feet of water at least and perhaps ten, a hole with retour under the bank, a regular nest for fish and a paradise for the fisherman. I might look upon that hole as my property, Monsieur le Président, as I was its Christopher Columbus. Everybody in the neighborhood knew it, without making any opposition. They used to say: 'That is Renard's place;' and nobody would have gone to it, not even Monsieur Plumsay, who is well known, be it said without any offense, for boning other peoples' places.
"Well, I returned to my place of which I felt certain, just as if I had owned it. I had scarcely got there on Saturday, when I got into Delila, with my wife. Delila is my Norwegian boat, which I had built by Fourmaise, and which is light and safe. Well, as I said, we got into the boat and we were going to bait, and for baiting, there is nobody to be compared with me, and they all know it. You want to know with what I bait? I cannot answer that question; it has nothing to do with the accident; I cannot answer, that is my secret. There are more than three hundred people who have asked me; I have been offered glasses of brandy and liquors, fried fish, matelotes,[16] to make me tell! But just go and try whether the chub will come. Ah! they have patted my stomach to get at my secret, my recipe.... Only my wife knows ... and she will not tell it, any more than I shall!... Is not that so Mélie?"