"And your morning coffee, M. Bouillard?"
"_Tiens, mon cafe! Helas non_, Madame Bathilde, I am but this moment
awake--what time is it?"
Just inside the door of Madame Chalumeau's shop, Au Gout Parisien, hung
a clock.
"It is ten minutes to seven."
"_Eh, bien, au revoir_, Madame Bathilde--I must go and set things going
in my small household. Alas, poor Josephine!"
Madame Chalumeau shook her head with great gravity.
"A great loss, M. Bouillard; an irreparable loss. But--my coffee is
nearly ready. Will you not let me give you a cup? There are also an
Auvergnat" (a double twist of well-made bread) "and a Bourdon sent me by
my cousin, Madame Decomplet, of the Rue d'Argentan----"
And ten minutes later the two gossips, as the pleasant old phrase runs,
were seated in Madame Chalumeau's little sitting-room behind her shop,
breakfasting together.
Monsieur Bouillard's Josephine had been dead for seven long years, and
in her life she had tormented the good man full sore; even as the Church
invariably defers canonisation until long after the death of the saint,
so Desire's appreciation of his wife's splendour of character was a
post-mortem tribute to be accepted without a murmur by all the faithful.
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