retrench all expenses that were not absolutely necessary.

Bathilde's first impulse on learning this devotion was to fall at
Buvat's feet and express her gratitude; but she soon understood that, to
arrive at her desired end, she must feign ignorance.

The next day Bathilde told Buvat, laughing, that it was throwing away
money to keep her masters any longer, for she knew as much as they did;
and as, in Buvat's eyes, Bathilde's drawings were the most beautiful
things in the world, and as, when she sang, he was in the seventh
heaven, he found no difficulty in believing her, particularly as her
masters, with unusual candor, avowed that their pupil knew enough to
study alone; but Bathilde had a purifying influence on all who
approached her. Bathilde was not satisfied with saving expense, but also
wished to increase his gains. Although she had made equal progress in
music and drawing, she understood that drawing was her only resource,
and that music could be nothing but a relaxation. She reserved all her
attention for drawing; and as she was really very talented, she soon
made charming sketches. At last one day she wished to know what they
were worth; and she asked Buvat, in going to his office, to show them to
the person from whom she bought her paper and crayons, and who lived at
the corner of the Rue de Clery. She gave him two children's heads which
she had drawn from fancy, to ask their value. Buvat undertook the
commission without suspecting any trick, and executed it with his
ordinary naivete. The dealer, accustomed to such propositions, turned
them round and round with a disdainful air, and, criticising them
severely, said that he could only offer fifteen francs each for them.
Buvat was hurt not by the price offered, but by the disrespectful manner
in which the shopkeeper had spoken of Bathilde's talent. He drew them
quickly out of the dealer's hands, saying that he thanked him.

The man, thinking that Buvat thought the price too small, said that, for
friendship's sake, he would go as high as forty francs for the two; but
Buvat, offended at the slight offered to the genius of his ward,
answered dryly that the drawings which he had shewn him were not for
sale, and that he had only asked their value through curiosity. Every
one knows that from the moment drawings are not for sale they increase
singularly in value, and the dealer at length offered fifty francs; but
Buvat, little tempted by this proposition, by which he