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Updated: May 22, 2025
He has told me this one tragedy of his life. In days gone by I used to think this thirty-year-old love-story dull and commonplace; to-day I understand M. Jupille; I relish him even. He and I have become sympathetic. I no longer make him move from his seat by the fire when I want to ask him a question: I go to him.
The matter really was a new line, invented by M. Jupille, cast a little further than an ordinary one, and rigged up with a float like a raft, carrying a little clapper. The fish rang their own knell as they took the hook. "It's rattling like mad!" cried Jupille, "and you don't stir! I couldn't have thought it of you, Monsieur Flamaran."
"Jupille!" exclaimed M. Flamaran, "you have shipwrecked us! This is Crusoe's land; and what the dickens do you mean by it?" The old clerk, utterly discomfited, and wearing that hangdog look which he always assumed at the slightest rebuke from Counsellor Boule, pulled a face as long as his arm, went up to M. Flamaran and whispered a word in his ear. "Upon my word!
Really, Jupille, what are you thinking of? And I a professor, too! Thirty years ago it would have been excusable, but to-day! Besides, Sidonie expects me home to dinner " He stopped for a moment, undecided, looking at his watch. Jupille, who was eying him intently, saw his distinguished friend gradually relax his frown and burst into a hearty laugh.
Go and see him." Not knowing whom I was about to address, I gave a warning cough as I came near him. The unknown drew a loud breath, like a man who wakes with a start. "That you, Jupille?" he said, turning a little way; "are you out of bait?" "No, my dear tutor, it is I." "Monsieur Mouillard, at last!" "Monsieur Flamaran! Jupille told the truth when he said I should be surprised.
Jupille, on the other hand, was as pale as if he had been in a street riot, and seemed rooted to the spot where he stood. "It's all right, Jupille; it's all right, man! A little ready wit is all you need, dash my wig!" The old clerk gradually regained his composure, and the dinner grew very merry. Flamaran's spirits, raised by this little incident, never flagged.
I began to descend the slope, knowing that M. Jupille was awaiting me somewhere in the valley. I broke into a run. I heard the murmur of water in the hollows, and caught glimpses of forget-me-not tufts in low-lying grassy corners. Suddenly a rod outlined itself against the sky, between two trees. It was he, the old clerk; he nodded to me and laid down his line. "I thought you never were coming."
Now, when he hands me a deed, instead of saying "All right," as I used to, I say, "Take a chair, Monsieur Jupille"; I shut the door, and we talk. The clerks think we're talking law, but the clerks are mistaken. Yesterday, for instance, he whispered to me: "I have come down the Rue de l'Universite. They will soon be back." "How did you learn that?"
Upon my word, I could see nobody, until he directed my gaze with his fishing-rod, when I perceived, ten yards away, a large back view of white trousers and brown, unbuckled waistcoat, a straw hat which seemed to conceal a head, and a pair of shirt-sleeves hanging over the water. This mass was motionless. "He must have got a bite," said Jupille, "else he would have been here before now.
But the happiest, the most radiant, next to ourselves, were the people who came only for Jeanne's sake and mine; Sylvestre Lampron, painter-in-ordinary to Mademoiselle Charnot, bringing his pretty sketch as a wedding-present; M. Flamaran and Sidonie; Jupille, who wept as he used to "thirty years ago;" and M. and Madame Plumet, who took it in turns to carry their white-robed infant.
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