Godefroid then saw a cup of excellent cafe au lait with a smoking omelet, fresh butter, and little red radishes.
“Where the devil did you get those radishes?” he asked.
“They were given me by Monsieur Cartier,” answered Madame Vauthier; “and I make a present of them to monsieur.”
“And what are you going to ask me for such a breakfast daily?”
“Well now, monsieur, be fair,—I couldn’t do it for less than thirty sous.”
“Very good, thirty sous then;” said Godefroid; “but how is it that they ask me only forty-five francs a month for dinner, close by here at Machillot’s? That is the same price you ask me for breakfast.”
“But what a difference, monsieur, between preparing a dinner for fifteen or twenty persons and going out to get you just what you want for breakfast! See here! there’s a roll, eggs, butter, the cost of lighting a fire, sugar, milk, coffee!—just think! they ask you sixteen sous for a cup of coffee alone on the place de l’Odeon, and then you have to give a sou or two to the waiter. Here you have no trouble; you can breakfast in slippers.”
“Very well, very well,” said Godefroid.
“Without Madame Cartier who supplies me with milk and eggs and herbs I couldn’t manage it. You ought to go and see their establishment, monsieur. Ha! it’s fine! They employ five journeymen gardeners, and Nepomucene goes there in summer to draw water for them; they hire him of me as a waterer. They make lots of money out of melons and strawberries. It seems monsieur takes quite an interest in Monsieur Bernard,” continued the widow in dulcet tones; “or he wouldn’t be responsible for his debts. Perhaps he doesn’t know all that family owes. There’s the lady who keeps the circulating library on the place Saint-Michel; she is always coming here after thirty francs they owe her,—and she needs it, God knows! That sick woman in there, she reads, reads, reads! Two sous a volume makes thirty francs in three months.”
“That means a hundred volumes a month,” said Godefroid.