At last, when alone with her behind closed doors,
he would thrash her on the slightest pretext.
The least thing was sufficient to make him raise his
hand, and when he had once begun he did not stop, but
he would throw into her face the true motive for his
anger. At each blow he would roar: “There,
you beggar! There, you wretch! There, you
pauper! What a bright thing I did when I rinsed
my mouth with your rascal of a father’s apology
for brandy.”
The poor woman lived in continual fear, in a ceaseless
trembling of body and soul, in everlasting expectation
of outrageous thrashings.
This lasted ten years. She was so timorous that
she would grow pale whenever she spoke to any one,
and she thought of nothing but the blows with which
she was threatened; and she became thinner, more yellow
and drier than a smoked fish.
One night, when her husband was at sea, she was suddenly
awakened by the wild roaring of the wind!
She sat up in her bed, trembling, but, as she hear
nothing more, she lay down again; almost immediately
there was a roar in the chimney which shook the entire
house; it seemed to cross the heavens like a pack of
furious animals snorting and roaring.
Then she arose and rushed to the harbor. Other
women were arriving from all sides, carrying lanterns.
The men also were gathering, and all were watching
the foaming crests of the breaking wave.
The storm lasted fifteen hours. Eleven sailors
never returned; Patin was among them.
In the neighborhood of Dieppe the wreck of his bark,
the Jeune-Amelie, was found. The bodies of his
sailors were found near Saint-Valery, but his body
was never recovered. As his vessel seemed to have
been cut in two, his wife expected and feared his
return for a long time, for if there had been a collision
he alone might have been picked up and carried afar
off.
Little by little she grew accustomed to the thought
that she was rid of him, although she would start
every time that a neighbor, a beggar or a peddler
would enter suddenly.
One afternoon, about four years after the disappearance
of her husband, while she was walking along the Rue
aux Juifs, she stopped before the house of an old
sea captain who had recently died and whose furniture
was for sale. Just at that moment a parrot was
at auction. He had green feathers and a blue
head and was watching everybody with a displeased
look. “Three francs!” cried the auctioneer.
“A bird that can talk like a lawyer, three francs!”
A friend of the Patin woman nudged her and said:
“You ought to buy that, you who are rich.
It would be good company for you. That bird is
worth more than thirty francs. Anyhow, you can
always sell it for twenty or twenty-five!”
Patin’s widow added fifty centimes, and the
bird was given her in a little cage, which she carried
away. She took it home, and, as she was opening
the wire door in order to give it something to drink,
he bit her finger and drew blood.
