house he would be content to gaze upon her, and his remarks to her would be simply such as were demanded by common politeness, the reasonable remarks of a modest young man. When he had taken his first glass of tanglefoot he began to discover that she was handsomer than before; at the second he would make eyes at her; at the third he would say: "If you were only so minded, Mam'zelle Désirée" without ever concluding his sentence; at the fourth he would be pulling her by her petticoats and trying to kiss her; and when he reached his tenth, then it was Father Auban who waited on the customers.
The old wineseller, who was up to all the tricks of his trade, used to send Désirée around among the tables to keep the drinking up to a satisfactory pitch, and Désirée, who was Father Auban's own worthy daughter, would whisk her petticoats to and fro among the drinkers and exchange pleasantries with them, a smile on her lips and malice in her eye.
Through drinking many glasses of tanglefoot Désirée's image became so deeply imprinted on Patin's heart that he was thinking of her constantly, even while he was out at sea, while he was casting his nets into the water, away out on the broad ocean, on the nights when the wind blew and the nights when it was calm, on the nights when the moon shone and the nights when it was dark. He thought of her as he held the tiller in the stern of his boat, while his four shipmates were slumbering with their heads pillowed, on their arms. He always beheld her smiling on him, raising her shoulder to pour out the yellow brandy, and then going away, saying:
"There! Are you satisfied?"
