In the calm hour of eve, I would fly in a mad career, towards the vast horizon dyed rose colour in the setting sun. Out there, all becomes rose in the twilight: the sun-burnt mountains, the sand, the garments of the Arabs, the dromedaries, the horses, the tents! The rose-coloured flamingoes fly upwards from the marshes to the rose-coloured sky, and I should scream with delight, plunged in the boundless infinite rosiness, of all that surrounds me. [Illustration 040] I shall be released from the sight of the streets and the deafening noise of cabs on the pavement, from the sight of black-coated men, seated on uncomfortable chairs, as they sip their absinthe and talk over business. I should ignore the state of the money market, political events, changes of ministry, all the useless frivolities on which we squander our short and vapid existence. Why should I undergo these worries, these sufferings, these struggles? I would rest sheltered from the wind in my bright and sumptuous dwelling. The winged dream was floating before my closed eyelids, and over my mind as it sank to rest; when I heard my men awakening, lighting the boat's lantern, and setting to work at some arduous and lengthy task. I called out to them: "What on earth are you doing?" Raymond replied in a hesitating voice: "We are getting some lines ready, sir; for we thought that you would like to fish, if it was fine enough at sun-rise." Agay is during the summer, the rendezvous of all the fishermen along the coast. Whole families come there, sleeping at the inn or in the boats, eating _bouillabaisse_ on the beach, under the shade of the pine trees, the resinous bark of which crackles in the sun. I inquired: "What o'clock is it?" "Three o'clock, sir." Then, without rising, I stretched out my arm, and opened the door that separated my room from the forecastle. The two men were squatting in the low den, through which the mast passes in fitting into the step; the den was full of such strange and odd things, that one might take it for a haunt of thieves; in perfect order along the partitions, instruments of all kinds were suspended: saws, axes, marling spikes, pieces of rigging, and saucepans; on the floor between the two berths, a pail, a stove, a barrel with its copper circles, glistening under the immediate ray of light from the lantern which hangs between the anchor bitts, by the side of the cable tiers; and my men were busy, baiting the innumerable hooks hanging all along the fishing lines. "At what hour must I get up?" I asked. "Why, now, sir, at once." Half an hour after, we all three embarked on board the dingy, and left the "_Bel-Ami_" to go and spread our net at the foot of the Drammont, near the Ile d'Or. Then when our line, some two or three hundred yards long, had sunk to the bottom, we baited three little deep-sea lines, and having anchored the boat by sinking a stone at the end of a rope, we began to fish.