The Conqueror of Death, page 7
“That’s something else I never suspected,” said Vincent Champignol.
“Do you want me to talk about the extraordinary endurance and vitality of eels? They’re found everywhere, in turbulent running water, under waterfalls, in stagnant waters, marshes and ditches. They undertake long voyages and have no fear of venturing on to land. They sometimes travel long distances crawling like snakes, taking advantage with an admirable instinct of wet ground and grassy terrain abundantly moistened by dew. As they only set out en route during the darkest nights, that curious migration has been contested, but thousands of facts have demonstrated its exactitude. During their excursions they live on worms, snails, larvae and insects, and even a few vegetables for which they have a certain predilection. Not everything is beneficial, however, and if they eat too much they are often afflicted by a malady known as ‘white stains,’ white leads to rapid deterioration and sometimes to death.”
“Are eels oviparous or viviparous?” I asked, wanting to display a measure of ichthyological knowledge myself.
“The answer is rather embarrassing, because scientists are not in accord regarding the reproduction of this fish, which presents so many singularities. The ancients believed that it was born in mud, thanks to fragments of its body that it detached by rubbing itself against hard objects. However, it’s almost proven now that eels are oviparous—which is to say that they reproduce by means of eggs, and that they deposit their spawn at the mouths of rivers, in littoral pools, almost everywhere that fresh water mingles with salt water. At any rate, every year, in spring, thousands and millions of little eels, known as elvers, travel upstream in compact masses, disseminating at length all the way to the sources. It’s certain that eels only reproduce in the sea, or at least in close proximity to the sea, but that fresh water is indispensable for them to grow. They therefore travel up rivers and streams, where they resemble threads, and come downstream again when they are adults, in order to ensure the survival of the species. It is in accordance with these facts that fishermen in the lagoons of Commachio in Italy had organized an entire system of canals and basins permitting them to catch considerable masses of eels long before naturalists, Spallanzani in particular, had described their mores and habits.”
“Which proves,” I added, sententiously, “that observation and experiment are very valuable.”
“A few moments ago,” said Vincent Champignol, “you mentioned numerous species of eels; however, all those I’ve caught resemble this one.”
“There’s no shortage of varieties,” the painter replied, “and with their mania for classifying everything infinitely, scientists will invent them if they don’t exist. Lacépède distinguished the Acérines, the Pimperneaux, the Guiseaux, the Verniaux; Blanchard listed the broad-nosed eel, the medium-nosed eel, the oblong-nosed eel and the long-nosed eel; Valenciennes added the flat-nosed eel. I’ll spare you the black, grey, brown, yellow and green eels—I’d never finish.”
“It’s a pity,” said Vincent Champignol, “that the eel, which is a delicious fish when it has passed through Nanette’s heads, doesn’t bite a line more readily.”
“That’s because you don’t know how to fish for eels at the right time. It’s alleged that they remain in hiding during the day and only quit their shelter, mud or deep hole during the night. And it’s also necessary for the night to be very dark, without the slightest moonlight; add to that obscurity stormy weather and a little thunder.”
“Thank you, but I sleep at night and only fish in daylight.”
Félix approached Julie Tafforel and said to him: “Permit me to congratulate you, Monsieur. Your lecture on eels is admirable!”
“I’m delighted to have taught you something, Monsieur,” the painter replied, standing up straight. “Nevertheless, I forgot to cite a proverb to which the eel has given rise.”
“Which one, if you please?” asked Félix Grandin, with a certain arrogance.
“That the harder one grasps them in the hand, the slipperier they become…and finally escape.”
“Oh, that’s very true!” said Laure, spontaneously.
“Well,” I said to the former haberdasher, when we found ourselves alone, “what impression has Monsieur Tafforel made on you?”
“He’s a charming young man, converses well, is good company, with a certain zest...”
“Of course. He’s an angler!”
“That’s true—and he’s good at it!”
Vincent Champignol did not hide the excellent opinion that he had of Julien Tafforel. On the other hand, he returned to his engagement with the Grandins and explained all the difficulties preventing him from breaking it.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I know someone entirely disposed to help you.”
“Who’s that?”
“Mademoiselle Laure...”
Vincent Champignol could not overcome his hesitation, however, and while declaring that Julien Tafforel was a charming fellow, he did not decide in his favor—or, rather, made no decision.
As you can imagine, we had not accepted a return match or renewed our miraculous catch. The painter, moreover, often absented himself in order to work and dared not come as often as he would have liked. In his moments of leisure, he fished—or rather, trained with Père Benamer, who, always devoted to the “cream” of landlords, prepared good lines for him, and instructed him as to how to bait them in accordance with the time and the place. Soon, he acquired a certain skill, and dared to compare himself with Vincent Champignol. Three or four times, he fished in his company, and was able to hold his own.
Almost invariably, he broke the monotonous silence of the angling with instructive recitations and notions of natural history that amazed the former haberdasher and put a strong dose of esteem for his young companion into his heart. The later offered to paint a portrait of him casting his line at his favorite spot, with specimens of all the fish that lived in “his” river at his feet.
The proposal was accepted, but in order not to start the evil tongues that are always numerous in a little village wagging, and in order not to alert the Grandins, Vincent Champignol only consented to posse in the painter’s studio. Although that decision only put a faint smile on Julien Tafforel’s face, he submitted to it with the best grace in the world.
The handsome Félix, understanding that he was losing ground, also decided to take up angling, imagining that what had worked for his rival would similarly favor him. He set out of campaign immediately, and every time that he knew that Vincent Champignol was alone in his hiding-place, he hastened to take up a position alongside him.
He was an odd fisherman, though. Clad in a costume dazzling in its whiteness, dressed up to the nines, shod in highly-polished boots, his monocle in his eyes and his hands gloved, he brandished a magnificent cane purchased in Paris-and worth a good hundred francs—majestically. Needless to add, he was usually accompanied by a domestic specially charged with baiting and searching for insects, worms and maggots—in brief, all the vermin that every angler worthy of the name chooses attentively.
Having realized that white frightened the fish and that the illustrious chemist Humphry Davy, taking account of the principle of milieux, hunted in dark red garments and fished clad in green in order not to scare either the birds or the fish, he arrived one morning in a spinach-green suit that would have been the pride of the most original dandy of the Directoire. Nothing was lacking in it—not even the socks with a copper-sulfate tint and the satin-covered hat equipped with an immense veil in green gauze, like those that Englishmen on holiday suspend from their topis.
That ridicule kills is a verity as old as the world, and the handsome Félix was well and truly sunk!
On one fine day in the month of August, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, Vincent Champignol and the two suitors went down to the hiding-place and cast their lines in the water. Suddenly, a sharp cry rang out. Vincent Champignol had just been disarmed. A large carp had bitten and had been hooked, but before the angler had recovered his composure and consolidated his rod in his hand, it had applied two or three formidable thrusts of its tail and escaped, dragging the entire rod and line with it.
Still dragged by the crazed fish, the rod floated, describing the most fantastic swerves. It went out into the river, came back toward the bank, stopped abruptly, and set off again like an arrow, proving by that chaotic course how capable the carp was of towing an object that embarrassed it enormously.
As for Vincent Champignol, he stood there, open-mouthed and utterly disconcerted. He looked around in search of a boat in which he might embark. Then, finding none, he threw himself into the water fully dressed. At first he could set foot on the bed and was almost able to reach the line, but the carp, sensing that it was under threat, headed desperately out into mid-stream. Vincent Champignol bravely started to swim in pursuit.
In the blink of an eye, fearing for the life of his future father-in-law, Julien Tafforel kicked off his shoes, rid himself of his alpaca jacket and hurled himself into the river. In a few strokes, he arrived at the theater of the struggle…
At that exact moment Vincent Champignol seized the rod, and, slightly harassed by his clothing, turned over on to his back, flattening himself like a plank, and gave a few vigorous kicks in order to reach the bank. The carp too pulled with all its might, manifesting an intention to escape.
The sight of Julien Tafforel annoyed the former haberdasher, who wanted to keep for himself all the merit of the most glorious victory he had ever won. “I can swim,” he said, “and I have no need of anyone to come to my aid.”
The painter had one of those inspirations that one only finds in the crucial moments of life. “Who said anything about rescuing you?” he replied. “I’m only here to watch the carp and make sure that it doesn’t escape.”
Was that not the language of an angler? Champignol felt his entire body quiver.
“Oh, I recognize you in that! You’re a true colleague. Make sure it doesn’t unhook itself.”
“I’m watching it.”
One holding the rod and the other the line, the two men returned to the bank, bringing a superb carp, weighing, according to the estimate they had already made, nearly eight kilograms.
But they were dripping wet; their clothes were stuck to their bodies; various green algae were tangled in their hair. They looked something like those gods that painting and sculpture have imagined to represent rivers, only lacking the urns symbolizing their sources.
The handsome Félix could not keep a straight face; he burst out laughing. “Ha ha! What a mess you’re in! You really are funny. You need to be hung upside down to drain you.”
With an admirable presence of mind, Vincent Champignol shouted, in a severe tone: “You’re laughing, Monsieur! You’re laughing when we’ve just risked the greatest danger! Have you no heart, then?”
Then he threw himself into the arms of the astounded painter, crying: “Oh, my savior—but for you I’d be lost. How can so much courage and devotion be recognized? I’ll never forget the service you’re rendered me. My wife and daughter will bless you...”
To judge which of them was the most astonished—the handsome Félix or the painter—would have been impossible. As the latter was no fool, he quickly recovered his aplomb, kissed Vincent Champignol on both cheeks and said, with perfectly simulated emotion: “I only did my duty. Are you not already a father to me?”
“Oh, my dear friend, from this day on you are one of us—a member of the family.”
That was an explicit consent to Laure’s marriage to Julien Tafforel. Félix Grandin was under no illusion, for he did not pronounce a single word while the “drowning victim” and his savior congratulated one another in front of him.
Thus were concluded the hesitations and worries of Vincent Champignol—who could henceforth devote himself to his favorite pleasure without the slightest preoccupation. The Grandin family tried to resist and to launch a few malevolent insinuations, but public opinion loudly approved the former haberdasher for knowing how to show his gratitude and giving his only daughter to the man who had snatched him from certain death.
A few days after the celebration of the marriage, Vincent Champignol said to his son-in-law: “Admit that on the day you vanquished me in single combat you were experimenting with a new bait. Now, I hope that you won’t have any more secrets from me, and that you’ll let me have your marvelous recipe.”
Julien Tafforel and his young bride exchanged knowing glances. Ought they to reveal the ruse or continue to dress in peacock feathers in order to retain forever the glorious title of “the finest angler of the era?”
The painter made the decision to confess, without naming me in order to avoid compromising me; he explained the stratagem that had succeeded so well, thanks to the connivance of Père Benamer.
Vincent Champignol did not harbor any resentment over the deception of which he had been the object, and was the first to laugh at it.
“When you go fishing,” he said to his son-in-law, “one can’t claim that your line has an idiot on both ends of it.”
Camille Debans: The Story of an Earthquake
(1892)
On 18 November 1834, at 7.35 a.m., the ships at sea in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Chile experienced a violent shock. Something like a terrible frisson ran through their hulls from one end to the other, causing their timbers to creak and their masts to groan; then, after five or six seconds of suspension, they resumed their progress, without anyone being able to account for the strange phenomenon. They subsequently learned that the shock had simply been the repercussion of the Talcahuano earthquake—a repercussion felt more than three hundred leagues away at sea.14
The mariners who put into Concepcion Bay a few days later no longer found the town, and learned that the ships anchored in the harbor had almost all perished.
Concepcion Bay is one of the largest and most splendid havens on the Pacific coast of South America. It is five leagues across from north to south, and more than fifteen kilometers from east to west. Seen from anchorage, it appears immense. With the naked eye, in clear weather, one can scarcely make out the eastern and northern coasts, almost continually veiled by a light mist, which lends a mysterious charm to the horizon.
Talcahuano is a small town with white houses, distributed in a disorderly fashion over a peninsula in the south-east of the bay.
Behind Talcahuano, the foothills of the Cordilleras rise up immediately, covered by luxuriant vegetation and populated by innumerable herds of livestock. To the west, the principal hill of the town slopes down to fade away in a vast plain once occupied by the sea, extending between two mountains extending from the interior all the way to the town of Concepcion, which is the capital of the province.
Talcahuano no longer keeps count of earthquakes. Since its foundation—which was, parenthetically, due to French navigators—that small town has been destroyed at least fifteen times. Thus, its houses are constructed in anticipation of the frequent shocks to which it is subject. There are very few habitations of brick or stone, but in general, they are more or less spacious huts built in mud and supple wood. They have no foundations; the floorboards rest on enormous cylindrical logs, and the houses can, in consequence, move forwards and backwards without being damaged.
Experience has demonstrated that this plan is the most favorable in the event of volcanic eruptions, but from the point of view of road-building and the alignment of streets, that mode of construction offers inconveniences, the least of which is to annoy the Alcalde.
In fact, every inhabitant possesses a garden behind his house. When the requirements of cultivation cause him to feel the necessity of enlarging his garden, the proprietor contents himself with pushing his house, which slides over the logs and advances one, two or three meters toward the middle of the street. His garden therefore grows by as much on the side hidden from the public highway. This operation, repeated several time in accordance with need by each proprietor, ends up producing streets of microscopic width, whose irregular contours would make the most tortuous Flemish streets seem rectilinear by comparison.
When the encroachment reaches such proportions that the street is in danger of being replaced by a connecting wall, however, the Alcalde intervenes and lets it be known to the inhabitants, with a blast of his trumpet, that he is giving them twenty-four hours to readjust the alignment of their domiciles—and a pair of oxen harnessed to each house is sufficient to carry out the Alcalde’s order.
Earthquakes are not rare events in Peru, and more especially in Chile. Valparaiso suffers fifteen earthquakes a year, but if these disquieting events are not the preliminary effects of volcanic eruptions in the Cordilleras, the inhabitants content themselves with coming out of their houses in order not to be crushed by collapsing ceilings.
In Copiapo, a small town in the north famous for its copper and silver mines, especially the Gallos family’s silver mine, into the depths of which one goes down by means of a staircase carved in the silver mass, the earth is always quaking. The oscillations are not very obvious, but it is sufficient to lean on the wall of a hut to feel the perpetual trepidation of the ground immediately.
Thus, there are people in Chile who have been shaken by a hundred, a hundred and fifty, or even two hundred earthquakes.
For them, there are unequivocal signs by which one is able in advance to recognize the intensity of the terrible event: an increasingly heavy atmosphere, a sky veiled by hot vapors, nervous anxieties that extend in ascending progression from men to women, from women to animals, and from species to species thereafter, all the way to dogs, mules and horses, which are the most sensitive to the perturbations Thus, there are few examples of a mule or a horse continuing to walk during the five or six seconds preceding the subterranean noise and the trepidation of the earth.
