In order to have at least some food in the house and to pass the dull time, father and son now began to devote their leisure time to the sport of fishing, that is, with the angle, as far as it is permissible to everybody in Switzerland. This, be it said, was also one of the favorite pastimes of those decrepit Seldwylians who had come to grief in the world, most of them having failed in business. When the weather was favorable, namely, and when the fish took the bait most readily, one might see dozens of these gentry wander off provided with rod and pail, and on a walk along the shores of the river you might see one of them, every little distance, angling, the one in a long brown coat once of fashionable make, but with his bare feet in the water, the next attired in a tattered blue frock, astride an old willow tree, his ragged felt hat shoved over his left ear. Farther down even you might perceive a third whose meagre limbs were wrapped in a shabby old dressing gown, since that was the only article of clothing he had left, his long tobacco pipe in one hand, and an equally long fishing rod in the other. And in turning a bend of the river one was apt to encounter another queer customer who stood, quite nude, with his bald head and his fat paunch, on top of a flat rock in the river. This one had, though almost living in the water during the warm season, feet black as coal, so that it looked from a distance as if he had kept his boots on. Each of these worthies had a pot or a small box at his side, in which were swarming angle worms, and to obtain these they were industriously digging at all hours of the day not actually employed in fishing. Whenever the sky began to cloud up and the air became close and sultry, threatening rain, these quaint figures could be seen most numerously along the softly rolling stream, immovable like a congregation of ancient saints on their pillars. Without ever deigning to cast a glance in their direction, rustics from farm and forest used to pass them by, and the boatmen on the river did not even look their way, whereas these lone fishermen themselves used to curse in a forlorn way at these disturbers of their prey.