"Fish, like game, is no man's property. To-day belongs to one, to-morrow to another. It is his who can take it. I don't steal. As to being a coward--" "Why, you fight--and for money--men who are weaker than yourself." "Because they have beaten men weaker than themselves." "A coward's trade,--a coward's trade!" "Why, there are more honest pursuits, it is true. But it is not for you to tell me this!" "Then why did you not take up with those honest trades, instead of coming here skulking and feeding out of my saucepans?" "I give you the fish I catch, and what money I have. It isn't much, but it's enough; and I don't cost you anything. I have tried to be a locksmith to earn more; but when one has from one's infancy led a vagabond life on the river and in the woods, it is impossible to confine oneself to one spot. It is a settled thing, and one's life is decided. And then," added Martial, with a gloomy air, "I have always preferred living alone on the water or in the forest. There no one questions me; whilst elsewhere men twit me about my father, who was (can I deny it?) guillotined,--of my brother, a galley-slave,--of my sister, a thief!" "And what do you say of your mother?" "I say--" "What?" "I say she is dead." "You do right; it is as if I were, for I renounce you, dastard! Your brother is at the galleys; your grandfather and your father finished their lives daringly on the scaffold, mocking the priest and the executioner! Instead of avenging them you tremble!" "Avenging them?" "Yes, by showing yourself a real Martial, spitting at the headsman's knife and the red cassock, and ending like father, mother, brother, sister--" Accustomed as he was to the savage excitement of his mother, Martial could not forbear shuddering. The countenance of the widow as she uttered the last words was fearful. She continued, with increasing wrath: "Oh, coward! and even worse than coward! You wish to be honest! Honest? Why, won't you ever be despised, repulsed, as the son of an assassin or the brother of a felon? But you, instead of rousing your revenge and wrath, this makes you frightened! Instead of biting, you run away! When they guillotined your father, you left us,--coward! And you knew we could not leave the island to go into the city, because they call after us, and pelt us with stones, like mad dogs. Oh, they shall pay for it, I can tell you,--they shall pay for it!" "A man?--ten men would not make me afraid! But to be called after by all the world as the son and brother of criminals! Well, I could not endure it. I preferred going into the woods and poaching with Pierre, who sells game." "Why didn't you remain in the woods?" "I returned because I got into trouble with a keeper, and besides on the children's account, because they are of an age to take to evil from example." "And what is that to you?" "To me? Why, I will not allow them to become depraved like Ambroise, Nicholas, and Calabash." "Indeed!"