"You remember that you owe me sixty francs?"
"Yes, but recollect that when I said,'For what purpose shall I return you the sixty francs?' you replied, 'That is my business.'"
"Very well, so indeed it is my business.... Will you give me the Piranèses which are upstairs in the big portfolio?"
"What do you call the Piranèses?"
"Those large black engravings that my father brought back from Italy."
"What will you do with them?"
"I will find a home for them."
My mother shrugged her shoulders dubiously.
"Do as you like about them," she said.
There was an architect, named Oudet, amongst the staff at the workhouse, who very much wanted our Piranèses. I had always refused him them, telling him that one day I would bring him them myself. The day had come. But it was an unlucky day: Oudet had no money. This was quite conceivable. Oudet, as architect to the Castle, received only a hundred francs per month. True, I was not very exorbitant in the matter of my Piranèses, which were well worth five or six hundred francs; I only asked fifty francs. Oudet offered to pay me these fifty francs in three months' time.