Monsieur Segotin's Story
amiabilities, well, that is what I can be doing very well without."
Upon his shop, though it drove a brisk and profitable trade, M. Segotin was in no way dependent. He had retired from active pursuit of the tobacco business ten years before we met, and he lived for the greater part of each year on a little property which he had inherited (together with a moderate income) in his native town of Saint Hilaire, in Central Belgium.
But at the beginning of each bathing season he flitted always, for the benefit of his health, to the coast and opened his shop on the digue at Blankenberghe. "For," as he used to say, "at home, on my property, I can be idle because there is always so much to do; but an idleness of four months by the sea would be my ruin. I should drink beer from morning till night in sheer despair, and I should die very quickly. My establishment, do you see, is a steadying influence for me. It also pays my expenses and a trifle over. So my sea-baths cost me nothing and I remain alive."
He was a bachelor with no near relatives except a sister who lived, married, in England, and two sprightly, middle-aged nieces, daughters of a brother, who helped him in his shop, and to whom his possessions were to descend on his death. "The little ones," as Monsieur Segotin always called them, had an easy enough time of it and spent more of their hours on the digue or in the sea than behind the counter. Each day M. Segotin bathed at
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