We passed through into a private workroom immediately behind the shop. His
wife sat there sewing; a broad, motherly woman of forty-five, fat,
tranquil, kind, with an old eye, a young voice, and a face that had got
its general flabbiness through much paddling and gnawing from other
women's teething babes. She sat still, unintroduced, but welcomed me with
a smile.
I was saying to her husband that a hummingbird was a very small thing to
ask him to stuff. But he stopped me with his lifted palm.
"My fran', a hummingbird has de pas-sione'--de ecstacie! One drop of blood
wid the pas-sione in it"--He waved his hand with a jerk of the thumb in
disdain of spoken words, and it was I who added,
"Is bigger than the sun?"
"Hah!" was all he uttered in approval, turning as if to go to work. I
feared I had disappointed him.
"God measures by the soul, not by the size," I suggested. But he would say
no more, and his wife put in as softly as a kettle beginning to sing,
"Ah, ha, ha! I t'ink dass where de good God show varrie good sanse."
I began looking here and there in heartiest admiration of the products of
his art and presently we were again in full sympathy and talking eagerly.
As I was going he touched my arm:
"You will say de soul is parted from dat lill' bird. And--yass; but"--he
let a gesture speak the rest.
"I know," replied I; "you propose to make the soul seem to come back and
leave us its portrait. I believe you will." Whereupon he gave me his
first, faint smile, and detained me with another touch.
"Msieu Smeet; when you was bawn?"
"I? December 9, 1844. Why do you ask?"
"O nut'n'; only I thing you make me luck; nine, h-eighteen, fawty-fo'--I
play me doze number' in de lott'ree to-day."
"Why, pshaw! you don't play the lottery, do you?"
"Yass. I play her; why not? She make me reech some of doze day'. Win fifty
dollah one time las' year."
The soft voice of the wife spoke up--"And spend it all to the wife of my
dead brother. What use him be reech? I think he don't stoff bird' no
betteh."
But the husband responded more than half to himself,
"Yass, I think mebbe I stoff him lill' more betteh."
When, some days afterward I called again, thinking as I drew near how much
fineness of soul and life, seen or unseen, must have existed in earlier
generations to have produced this man, I noticed the in conspicuous sign
over his door, P.T.B. Manouvrier, and as he led me at once into the back
room I asked him playfully what such princely abundance of initials might
stand for.
"Doze? Ah, doze make only Pas-Trop-Bon."
I appealed to his wife; but she, with her placid laugh, would only confirm
him:
"Yass; Pastropbon; he like that name. Tha's all de way I call him--
Pastropbon."