Madame Bathilde Chalumeau, her black cotton frock tucked up round her
plump figure over her scarlet-flannel petticoat, was dusting the windows
of her shop in the Rue Dessous l'Arche.
It was only six o'clock and the air as yet was cool, but the trees
leaning over the wall of Avocat Millot's garden opposite were grey with
dust and parched with the heat of an exceptionally warm September.
Madame Chalumeau, who was standing on a chair energetically flopping her
feather-brush over the panes of her double shop-front, sighed as she
looked up at the brilliant sky. "It is to be a heat of the devil," she
thought.
Next door to her, _chez_ Bouillard, nothing was stirring. Poor Désiré,
being a widower, was apt to oversleep himself, and it was bad for his
trade. Even now a small child in a black smock stood at his door,
waiting to fill his carafe with the black wine that had stained its
sides to such a beautiful violet hue.
"_Bonjour_, Christophe----"
"_Bonjour_, madame."
"You want wine?"
"_Oui_, madame."
"Then wait a moment and I will get it for thee."
Good Madame Chalumeau climbed down from her chair with a generous
display of fat, black woollen legs and unpinned her skirt.
"_Bon!_ M. Bouillard sleeps the fat morning, but I can get in, and you
will get a beating if you keep your excellent father waiting."
Taking the carafe, she passed under the archway that separated her house
from her neighbour's, and, her broad figure actually touching the wall
on either side, went to Bouillard's side-door and entered the house.
When she came out, the carafe full, Bouillard himself, fat and rosy with
sleep, was standing in his shop door. "Madame Bathilde, good day to you!
So you have again saved me from a commercial loss!" Désiré Bouillard had
a witty way with him, his far shrewder neighbour thought--had thought
for years.
And then, quite without consciousness or amusement, they enacted the
little comedy that had been played by them every morning since poor
Madame Bouillard died.
"And your morning coffee, M. Bouillard?"
"_Tiens, mon café! Hélas 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 Joséphine!"
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 Joséphine 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 Désiré's appreciation of his wife's splendour of character was a
post-mortem tribute to be accepted without a murmur by all the faithful.
"I recall to myself every morning, Madame Bathilde," he began, removing
a large blob of honey from the dimple in his pink chin, "how that angel
used to arise and prepare herself for her day's work. And of an economy!
Charcoal did for her four times what it will for me. And times are
hard!"
Bathilde sighed sympathetically. "My faith, yes; she was a wonderful
manager, _pauvre ange_. The milk is at your elbow, M. Désiré----"
Outside in her tiny garden a bee boomed somnolently among the red and
yellow flowers, and somewhere near at hand a church bell jerked its
unmusical summons to prayer.
Madame Chalumeau's face, glossy and red-and-white like a Norman apple,
wore an expression of anxious expectation. Moreover, she had put on a
narrow lace collar and pinned it with a coral brooch. It was the fifth
of the month.
M. Désiré ate his way through the generously laid meal with comfort and
deliberation, his small blue eyes, deeply embedded in pink flesh,
twinkling with ease.
As the clock struck half-past seven he laid his knife down and wiped his
beardless mouth.
"Bathilde," he said, "you are very kind to a poor afflicted mourner."
"Ah--Désiré!"
She was a woman of much sense, and she did not try to be coy.
"My heart, as you know, lies in the grave with my poor Joséphine----"
"But of course, my dear friend----"
"But--man is not fit to live all alone. And I am convinced that if I
could ask her, that angel would----" He paused and looked approvingly
round the tidy, comfortable little room.
"Yes--Désiré? She would----"
"I think she would--wish me to do the best I can for myself. And that,
of course--I mean to say I imagine----"
Poor Bathilde's hopes died suddenly.
"She was always so generous-minded," she murmured, folding her plump
hands.
He rose and walked to the shop door.
"Anything new to show me, _chère_ Madame Chalumeau?" he asked briskly.
"Yes; some coloured tablecloths, very pretty, at one franc
seventy-five--and--some other things. But, Désiré, you were saying about
living alone--that you thought Joséphine would be glad----"
"I did not say she would be glad, Madame Chalumeau. My wife was never
_glad_ about anything. I said--in fact, I may as well be quite frank,"
he continued, turning to her, "I am a lonely man, and I am--greatly
attracted to you, dear friend. But as I have told you before, I--I
cannot quite make up my mind as to whether I should be happier if I
married you."
"I could make you very comfortable, Désiré, and I, too, am lonely.
Besides, your accounts are very confused, and I could save you much
money in that way."
A shrewd woman, this, but greatly mistaken in her methods. A useless,
lazy, coquettish woman would have married the man years before, but poor
Bathilde's very frankness was her undoing.
"Yes, yes," he returned impatiently, "I know all that, and my affection
for you is great. But as to marriage--I cannot yet make up my mind. And
in the meantime I must leave you, dear friend, for it is late. A
thousand thanks for the delicious breakfast----" and he was gone.