Madame Mèfre raised her arms toward the sausages suspended from the ceiling:
“What! this is your young lady? And you have never told us about her! Well, how teeny-weeny she is! but a good girl, I’ll be bound. Take a seat Miss, do!”
Owing as much to his habit of lying as to a desire to keep himself free, the old man had never spoken about his children, but had given himself out as an old bachelor who lived on his income; but among Southern people nobody is at a loss for one invention or another; if an entire caravan of little Valmajours had marched in on the heels of Audiberte the welcome would have been just the same, just as warm and demonstrative; they rushed forward and made a place for her.
“Différemment, you must eat some dipped ladyfingers with us, too.”
The Provençal girl stood embarrassed. She had just come from outside, from the cold and blackness of the night, a hard night of December, where the feverish life of Paris continued to pulsate in spite of the late hour and could be felt through the heavy fog torn in every direction by swiftly moving shadows, the colored lanterns of the omnibuses and the hoarse horns of the street cars; she arrived from the North, she arrived from winter, and then all of a sudden, without transition, she found herself in the midst of Italian Provence, in this shop of the Mèfres glowing just previous to Christmas with all kinds of toothsome and sun-filled articles, in the midst of the well-known accents and fragrances of home! It was her own country suddenly found again, a return to the motherland after a year of exile, of struggles and trials far away among the barbarians. A warmth gradually invaded her and slackened her nerves, the while she broke her barquette cake in a thimbleful of Carthagène and answered the questions of all this kindly set of people, as much at ease and familiar with her as if everybody had known each other for twenty years or more. She felt a return to her life and usual habits; tears rose to her eyes—those hard eyes with veins of fire which never wept.
The name “Roumestan” uttered at her side dried up this emotion suddenly. It came from Mme. Mèfre, who was looking over the addresses of her clients and was warning her shop-boys not to make any mistake and especially not to take the codfish à la brandade for Numa to Grenelle Street, but to the Rue de Londres.
“Seems as if codfish is not in the odor of sanctity in the Rue de Grenelle,” remarked one of the cronies at the Products.
“Yes, indeed,” said M. Mèfre. “The lady belongs up North—just as northerly as possible—uses nothing but butter in her kitchen, eh?—while in the Rue de Londres there’s the nicest kind of South, jollity, singing and everything cooked in oil—I understand why Numa enjoys himself most there.”
So they were talking in the lightest of tones of this second household established by the Minister in a very convenient little house quite close to the railway station where he could repose after the fatigues of the Chamber, free from visitors and the greater botherations. You may be sure that the excitable Mme. Mèfre would have uttered fine screeches if just the same sort of thing had occurred in her family; but for Numa there was something very attractive and natural in it.
He loved the tender passion; but didn’t all our kings, Charles X and Henry IV, play the gay Lothario? Té! pardi! He got that from his Bourbon nose.