“We will take the liqueur in the salon,” said Madame Hochon, rising and motioning to Joseph to give her his arm. As they went out before the others, she whispered to the painter:—
“Eh! my poor boy; this dinner won’t give you an indigestion; but I had hard work to get it for you. It is always Lent here; you will get enough just to keep life in you, and no more. So you must bear it patiently.”
The kind-heartedness of the old woman, who thus drew her own predicament, pleased the artist.
“I have lived fifty years with that man, without ever hearing half-a-dozen gold pieces chink in my purse,” she went on. “Oh! if I did not hope that you might save your property, I would never have brought you and your mother into my prison.”
“But how can you survive it?” cried Joseph naively, with the gayety which a French artist never loses.
“Ah, you may well ask!” she said. “I pray.”
Joseph quivered as he heard the words, which raised the old woman so much in his estimation that he stepped back a little way to look into her face; it was radiant with so tender a serenity that he said to her,—
“Let me paint your portrait.”
“No, no,” she answered, “I am too weary of life to wish to remain here on canvas.”
Gayly uttering the sad words, she opened a closet, and brought out a flask containing ratafia, a domestic manufacture of her own, the receipt for which she obtained from the far-famed nuns to whom is also due the celebrated cake of Issoudun,—one of the great creations of French confectionery; which no chef, cook, pastry-cook, or confectioner has ever been able to reproduce. Monsieur de Riviere, ambassador at Constantinople, ordered enormous quantities every year for the Seraglio.