The Catalans: A Novel by Patrick O'Brian Read Free Book Online Page B

the marriage.
    It was a fairly slow process, this dispossession: it went on little by little, but it was nearly complete in twelve months. It was hardly a conscious process on either side; but on the side of the elders it was as efficient and unhesitating as if it had been carefully planned and concerted: more efficient.
    However, the novelty, the romantic glow, the conventional happiness carried Francisco and Madeleine through the first year. It was the second that brought so much conscious unhappiness. During the first year the sea, unfished for so long, yielded such quantities of fish that the oldest man had never seen the like, and the market, starved of fish for so long, was insatiable. There was plenty of money in Saint-Féliu, summer and winter, and even the Amphitrite earned enough to install an engine and to buy a lamparo, a little boat with a pair of huge lights to attract the fish by night, in the Spanish fashion.
    But the next year was different. The summer was cold and unnatural and the anchovies stayed away from the coast altogether; even the sardines were very scarce, and somebody—the men of La Nouvelle, it was said—began dynamiting them. Soon everybody was doing it, scooping up the shattered little fish from the surface and hurrying furtively back to port: it could not last; not only did the preventive officers come, but the fish went clean away, and not all the motors or lamparos in Saint-Féliu would bring them back.
    Madeleine and Francisco had, very early in their marriage, fallen into the habit of going to the family shop for meals. It had begun with Madeleine’s complete incapacity—she really could not boil an egg at first—and had continued because it was so much easier and because Dominique loved to have a talking crowd around the table. In the first year it had been convenient; it had not been necessary. Now it was essential, and now Francisco and Madeleine arrived with a hang-dog air, and now any quip or jibe about their extravagance in the first year’s prosperity went home and rankled. The quips and jibes, the “remarks passed” were rarely meant to be as unkind as they sounded sometimes, but it was remarkable how accurately those rather stupid women and that dull, heavy-witted man managed to say just the thing that would hurt most afterward, upon reflection.
    They had been a little extravagant, it is true: Madeleine had bought clothes; they had often gone to Perpignan for the day, and still more often to Collioure, where Francisco’s clever friends were to be found on the beach or in the cafés; he had bought canvases, colors, and a better easel. But it had seemed at the time that no one thing was more than a very little treat; there had been no single example of unjustifiable expense, and after all, as they had said to one another, a few hundred francs more or less would not make a great difference by the end of the year.
    It was not an agreeable situation, and it was less so for Francisco than it might have been for another, for his bad conscience made him vulnerable. He had not found casual work at the end of the fishing: he had not found it for the plain reason that he had not wanted to find it. He said to the family that it was not to be found (with a regretful shake of his head) and he had said to Madeleine that it was not to be found (with a grin of relief) and that he would have to pass the winter at home. They agreed that out of the evil came the blessing that he would have an uninterrupted stretch of time for his painting. He did: but it costs money to paint, and although the family could always be relied upon for help in kind, they would never part with cash.
    Now Madeleine was glad that she had learned to type: she had never ceased seeing Mme. Roig in spite of the widow’s disapproval of her marriage, and now she went and asked for her good offices with her nephew, Maître Roig, the lawyer, who sent most of his typing to a bureau in Perpignan. She, who had disliked the