"Mam'selle has of course seen the fair?" said Müller, from behind the old lady's back. "No, monsieur," "No! Is it possible?" "There was so much crowd, monsieur, and such a noise ... we were quite too much afraid to venture in." "Would you be afraid, mam'selle, to venture with me?" "I--I do not know, monsieur." "Ah, mam'selle, you might be very sure that I would take good care of you!" "_Mais ... monsieur_"... "These gentlemen, I see, have been angling," said the old lady, addressing me very graciously. "Have you caught many fish?" "None at all, madame!" I replied, loudly. "_Tiens_! so many as that?" "_Pardon_, madame," I shouted at the top of my voice. "We have caught nothing--nothing at all." _Ma tante_ smiled blandly. "Ah, yes," she said; "and you will have them cooked presently 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 Müller, 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 Müller 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 Müller, "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 Müller'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!...