LITMIR.BIZ

      We have said that Tregomain had “navigated,” but there are navigators and navigators. Antifer had visited the principal seas of the globe, not so his neighbour. Tregomain, being the son of a widow, had been exempt from serving the State, and he had never been on the sea.

      Never! He had seen the Channel from the heights of Cancale and even from Cape Frehel, but he had never ventured on it. He had been born in the painted cabin of a canal barge, and in a barge he had spent his life. First as a “hand,” then as “captain” of the Charmante Amélie, he had been up and down the Rance from Dinard to Dinan, from Dinan to Plumaugat, to return with a load of wood, of wine, of coal, according to the trade. He hardly knew of any other river. He was a fresh-water sailor no more and no less, while Antifer was the saltest of salts—a mere boatman by the side of a coaster captain; and so he lowered his flag in the presence of his neighbour and friend, who had no difficulty in keeping him at a distance.

      Tregomain lived in a pretty little house, about a hundred yards away from Antifer’s, at the end of the Rue de Toulouse, near the ramparts. One view looked out to sea, the other over the mouth of the Rance. He was a powerful man, of extraordinary breadth of shoulder—nearly a yard—five feet six inches high, a body like a box, invariably wearing a huge waistcoat with two rows of bone buttons, a brown jacket, always very clean, with great folds in the back and at the armholes. From this trunk came two huge arms big enough for the thighs of an ordinary man, terminated by enormous hands, big enough for the feet of a grenadier of the Old Guard. With such limbs and muscles, Tregomain could not be otherwise than of enormous strength. But he was a gentle Hercules. Never had he abused his strength, and never did he shake hands but with his thumb and index finger, for fear of smashing your fingers. Strength was latent in him. It never went was far as blows, but manifested itself without effort.

      To compare him with machines, he was less of the sledge-hammer than of the hydraulic press. That came from the circulation of his blood, great and generous, slow and insensible.

      From his shoulders rose a big head, wearing a high hat with a broad brim. His hair was flat, his whiskers mutton-chop, his nose curved, his mouth smiling, his lower lip projecting, his chin double and even treble, his teeth white, one incisor in the top row missing—teeth which had never been stained with the smoke of a pipe—eyes limpid and kind, under thick brows, colour brick-red, due to the breezes of the Rance, and not to the stormy gales of the ocean.

      Such was Gildas Tregomain, one of those obliging men to whom you can say, Come at twelve o’clock, come at two o’clock, and they will always be there.

      He was also a sort of unshakable rock, against which the surges of Captain Antifer beat in vain. When his neighbour was in one of his whirlwind moods he was sent for, and he came to placidly take all the buffetings of this tumultuous personage.

      And so the ex-captain of the Charmante Amélie was adored in the house—by Nanon to whom he served as a rampart, by Juhel who had vowed eternal friendship for him, by Enogate who did not hesitate to kiss his rounded cheeks and his wrinkleless forehead, that incontestable sign of a calm and conciliating temperament, according to the physiognomists.

      As the boatman mounted the wooden staircase that led to the first floor, the steps groaned under the heavy weight. Pushing open the door, he found himself in the presence of Captain Antifer.