to boil and my
roast to get ready; four sous if you like, but not a sou more."

"Four sous! _Bon Dieu!_ I would rather eat them myself. They only lack
speech to tell you themselves how fresh they are. Look at them!"

"Four sous," insists Suzette. "Do you think monsieur is rich enough to
buy the _republique_."

"_Allez!_ Then, take them at four sous." And Mere Marianne laughs, slips
the money into her trousers pocket, and goes off to another bargain in
the village, where, if she gets two sous for her mackerel she will be
lucky.

At six Suzette lifts the Burgundy tenderly from its resting-place in a
closet beneath the winding stone stairs--a stone closet, low, sinister,
and dark, that suggests the solitary dungeons of feudal times. Three
cobwebbed bottles of Burgundy are now carefully ranged before the
crackling blaze in the living room. At six-thirty Suzette lays the
generous dark-oak table in lace and silver, thin glasses, red-shaded
candles, and roses--plenty of roses from the garden. Her kitchen by this
time is no longer open to visitors. It has become a sacred place,
teeming with responsibility--a laboratory of resplendent shining copper
sauce-pans, pots and casseroles, in which good things steam and stew and
bubble under lids of burnished gold, which, when lifted, give one a
rousing appetite.

* * * * *

I knew Tanrade's ring--vigorous and hearty, like himself. You would
never guess this sturdy, broad-shouldered man has created delicious
music--fairy ballets, pantomimes, and operettas. All Paris has applauded
him for years, and his country has rewarded him with a narrow red
ribbon. Rough-bearded, bronzed like a sailor, his brown eyes gleam with
kindness and intelligence. The more I know this modest great man the
more I like him, and I have known him in all kinds of wind and weather,
for Tanrade is an indefatigable hunter. He and I have spent nights
together in his duck-blind--a submerged hut, a murderous deceit sunk far
out on the marsh--cold nights; soft moonlight nights--the marsh a mystic
fairy-land; black nights---mean nights of thrashing rain. Nights that
paled to dawn with no luck to bring back to Suzette's larder. Sunny
mornings after lucky nights, when Tanrade and I would thaw out over our
coffee in the garden among the roses.

Tanrade had arrived early, a habit with this genial gourmand when the
abandoned house is giving a dinner, for he likes to supervise the final
t