Pauline tried to soothe him. The poor folk were in a terrible state of wretchedness. Since the sea had carried off the Houtelards' house, the most solidly built of all the village, together with three others, cottages of the poorer fishermen, their misery had increased. Houtelard, who had once been the rich man of the district, had now taken up his quarters in an old barn, some twenty yards behind his former dwelling; but the others, who had no such refuge, were housing themselves in clumsy huts made out of the shells of old boats. They were living in a miserable state of nudity and promiscuousness; the women and children were wallowing in vice and vermin. All that was bestowed upon them in charity went in drink. The wretched creatures sold all the food that was given them, with their clothes, pots, and pans, and what little furniture they had left, in order to buy drams of the terrible 'calvados,' which stretched them on the ground across their doorways like so many corpses. Pauline was the only one who still continued to say a word for them. Abbé Horteur had given them up, and Chanteau talked of sending in his resignation, being unwilling to remain any longer the Mayor of such a drove of swine. Lazare, too, when his cousin tried to excite his pity on behalf of that little colony of drunkards, beaten down by the fierceness of the elements, only repeated his father's eternal refrain: 'No one compels them to remain here. All that they have to do is to go elsewhere. Only a pack of idiots would come and stick themselves right under the waves.' This was the general feeling of the neighbourhood, and everyone looked upon the Bonneville folk as obstinate fools. The villagers, on the other hand, were mistrustfully unwilling to go elsewhere. They had been born there, they said, and why should they have to leave the place? The same sort of thing had been going on for hundreds and hundreds of years, and there was nothing for them to do anywhere else. Prouane, when he was exceptionally tipsy, always concluded by saying that wherever they might go they would always be devoured by something or other.