“Come,” I suggest, after we have ranged along a mile or so of these tiny booths, “let’s sit down in front of one of the cafés.”
With difficulty we find a place, and ordering two cafés créme watch the dense procession. The honest bourgeois are going to New Year’s Dinner, and their smiles are very happy. Soon they will frankly abandon themselves to the pleasures of the table, discussing each dish with rapture and eating till they can eat no more.
“What a race of gluttons are the French,” I remark severely to Anastasia. “Food and dress is about all they seem to think of. The other day I read in the paper that a celebrated costumier had received the cross of the Legion of Honour, and this morning I see that a well-known restaurateur has also been deemed worthy of the decoration. There you are! Reward your tailors and your cooks while your poets and your painters go buttonless. Oh, if there’s a people I despise, it’s one that makes a god of its stomach! By the way, what have we got for dinner?”
“Oh, I got chickens.”
“A good fat one, I hope.”
“Yes, nice fat chickens. I pay five franc for it. You are not sorry?”
“No, that’s all right. We can make it do two evenings, and we allow ourselves five francs a day for grub. I fancy we don’t spend even that, on an average?”
“No, about four and half franc.”
Every week she brought her expense book to me, and very solemnly I wrote beneath it: Examined and found correct. Another habit was to present for my approval a menu of all our meals for the coming week beneath which I would, in the same serious spirit, write: Approved. To these impressive occasions she contributed a proper dignity; yet at a hint of praise for her house-keeping nothing could exceed her delight.
Presently we rise and continue our walk. Everywhere is the same holiday spirit, the same easily amused crowd. There are song writers hawking their ditties, poor artists peddling their paintings, a “canvas for a crust.” Every needy art is gleaning on the streets.