The following day, the entire crew of the trawler came to bury the severed arm. Side by side, the two brothers headed the procession. The parish sacristan carried the coffin tucked under his arm.

Young Javel left the sea and found light work in the harbour. Later, whenever he told the tale, he would confide quietly to his audience: ‘If my brother had been willing to cut the net, I’d still have my arm today, that’s for sure. But he was what you might call a careful owner.’

A MILLION

There was once a modest little civil servant and his wife. The husband, who worked at one of the Ministries, was a stickler for propriety and worked meticulously at his job. His name was Léopold Bonnin. Though a very correct and orthodox young man brought up in the Church, he had become slightly less of a believer since the Republic’s recent tendency to separate the Church from the State.1 He could be heard openly declaring in the corridors of the Ministry, ‘I am a religious man, in fact very much so, but I believe in God and not priests.’ He was above all, as he proclaimed striking his breast, a man of honour. And indeed he was a man of honour in the most pedestrian sense of the word. He arrived at work punctually, left it punctually, hardly ever wasted time once he got there and was conspicuously honourable in what he called ‘matters pecuniary’.

He had married the daughter of a poor colleague. The latter had a sister who, by contrast, having married for love, was now a millionairess. This sister, to her lasting sorrow, had never had children of her own and was therefore obliged to pass on her wealth to her only niece. This inheritance was all the family thought of. Its presence floated around the house and over the entire Ministry where everyone knew that the Bonnins would one day ‘come into a million’.

The young couple too were childless but this was no problem to them as they carried on calmly in their honourable, straight, not to say narrow little ways. The apartment was neat and clean and had a slightly soporific effect on them. Their watchword was moderation in all things. A child, they thought, would only disturb their life together, their home, and their tranquillity. They would have gone to no special lengths to remain without issue, but since Heaven had sent them none, so much the better.