Chapter 1 - Page 2

is all over. The lazy brutes will not bite; they are taking their siesta
in the sun." And he looked round at the sea on all sides, with the
satisfied air of a proprietor.

He was a retired jeweller who had been led by an inordinate love of
seafaring and fishing to fly from the shop as soon as he had made enough
money to live in modest comfort on the interest of his savings. He
retired to le Havre, bought a boat, and became an amateur skipper.
His two sons, Pierre and Jean, had remained at Paris to continue their
studies, and came for the holidays from time to time to share their
father's amusements.

On leaving school, Pierre, the elder, five years older than Jean, had
felt a vocation to various professions and had tried half a dozen in
succession, but, soon disgusted with each in turn, he started afresh
with new hopes. Medicine had been his last fancy, and he had set to work
with so much ardour that he had just qualified after an unusually short
course of study, by a special remission of time from the minister. He
was enthusiastic, intelligent, fickle, but obstinate, full of Utopias
and philosophical notions.

Jean, who was as fair as his brother was dark, as deliberate as his
brother was vehement, as gentle as his brother was unforgiving, had
quietly gone through his studies for the law and had just taken his
diploma as a licentiate, at the time when Pierre had taken his in
medicine. So they were now having a little rest at home, and both looked
forward to settling in Havre if they could find a satisfactory opening.

But a vague jealousy, one of those dormant jealousies which grow up
between brothers or sisters and slowly ripen till they burst, on the
occasion of a marriage perhaps, or of some good fortune happening to
one of them, kept them on the alert in a sort of brotherly and
non-aggressive animosity. They were fond of each other, it is true, but
they watched each other. Pierre, five years old when Jean was born,
had looked with the eyes of a little petted animal at that other little
animal which had suddenly come to lie in his father's and mother's arms
and to be loved and fondled by them. Jean, from his birth, had always
been a pattern of sweetness, gentleness, and good temper, and Pierre had
by degrees begun to chafe at ever-lastingly hearing the praises of this
great lad, whose sweetness in his eyes was indolence, whose gentleness
was stupidity, and whose kindliness was blindness. His parents, whose
dream for their sons was some respectable and undistinguished calling,
blamed him for so often changing his mind, for his fits of enthusiasm,
his abortive beginnings, and all his ineffectual impulses towards
generous ideas and the liberal professions.

Since he had grown