re the
others, she whispered to the painter:--

"Eh! my poor boy; this dinner won't give you an indigestion; but I had
hard work to get it for you. It is always Lent here; you will get enough
just to keep life in you, and no more. So you must bear it patiently."

The kind-heartedness of the old woman, who thus drew her own
predicament, pleased the artist.

"I have lived fifty years with that man, without ever hearing
half-a-dozen gold pieces chink in my purse," she went on. "Oh! if I did
not hope that you might save your property, I would never have brought
you and your mother into my prison."

"But how can you survive it?" cried Joseph naively, with the gayety
which a French artist never loses.

"Ah, you may well ask!" she said. "I pray."

Joseph quivered as he heard the words, which raised the old woman so
much in his estimation that he stepped back a little way to look into
her face; it was radiant with so tender a serenity that he said to
her,--

"Let me paint your portrait."

"No, no," she answered, "I am too weary of life to wish to remain here
on canvas."

Gayly uttering the sad words, she opened a closet, and brought out a
flask containing ratafia, a domestic manufacture of her own, the receipt
for which she obtained from the far-famed nuns to whom is also due
the celebrated cake of Issoudun,--one of the great creations of French
confectionery; which no chef, cook, pastry-cook, or confectioner
has ever been able to reproduce. Monsieur de Riviere, ambassador at
Constantinople, ordered enormous quantities every year for the Seraglio.

Adolphine held a lacquer tray on which were a number of little old
glasses with engraved sides and gilt edges; and as her mother filled
each of them, she carried it to the company.

"It seems as though my father's turn were coming round!" exclaimed
Agathe, to whom this immutable provincial custom recalled the scenes of
her youth.

"Hochon will go to his club presently to read the papers, and we shall
have a little time to ourselves," said the old lady in a low voice.

In fact, ten minutes later, the three women and Joseph were alone in the
salon, where the floor was never waxed, only swept, and the worsted-work
designs in oaken frames with grooved mouldings, and all the other plain
and rather dismal furniture seemed to Madame Bridau to be in exactly the
same state as when she had left Issoudun. Monarchy, Revolution, Empire,
and Restoration, which respected little, ha