"_Cancer pagurus! Cirripedes!_" triumphantly spreading them on the table-cloth. "The fruits of my morning's labor, except _Hippcampus brevirostris_, vulgarly called Sea-Horse, which stood to me in the sum of forty cents: it shall be saved in other modes of expenditure,--say shoes,"--with a deprecating glance at his wife. "Yes, Jerome," her eyes fixed, hungrily, on the childish delight in his face. Lufflin began to perceive now for what she had worked; he chafed his whiskers, and entered into the spirit of the thing with zest. "You'd call me a happy man, now, Mounchere, to be the owner of this bit of ground, eh?" "I can conceive," said the Professor, gravely, catching his squirming prey, and tying them up in a handkerchief,--"I can conceive no better abode than this for a man of _esprit_,--of what you call stamina in mind. His wants are little; he rests, he works, he studies books, Nature. She is greatly good to him in this place; she opens her most delicate secrets; she gives to him grandeur, beauty, from full hands." "She fills his stomach, too," said the Captain, hastily. "No better fishing on the coast, not to mention clams and oysters. Yes, Mounchere," after a pause, as they rose from table, "Nature's grand here, as you say,--or God, which is the same thing. If a man don't come nearer to Him by a day's outlook on yon sea than by years of town-life, it's because his eyes aren't worth the having." M. Jacobus stretched his long neck to look out at the dull, creeping, moaning waste without, his warm Gallic blood shivering with a vague idea that the relentless, inexorable Thing was no bad symbol of the Puritan's God. "Ah, _le bon Dieu!_" he muttered. "All that is best in men's nature has been given to make up that image,--and all that is most cruel." "Eh? yes," said the Captain, not understanding, but wagging his bald head wisely. "I will go now and preserve my specimens," said the Professor, "and then join our friend George below,--with your permission, Madame? He is but a fisher for the oyster, but I find in him a man of many facts." When he had mounted to his chamber and secured his prey in a jar, however, he did not return to George Cathcart, but stood irresolute, his hands clasped behind his back, the shiny boatman's hat he wore pulled over his eyes.