Patissot took the eight o’clock train, and after looking a long while discovered in the very heart of the town, an obscure street, a sort of filthy passageway enclosed by two high walls. At the end appeared a moldy door fastened with a string wound around two nails. He opened it and was confronted by an indescribable creature, apparently a woman. The upper part of her body was wrapped in a dirty shawl, a ragged skirt hung around her hips, and her frowsy hair was filled with pigeon feathers. Her little gray eyes scanned the visitor inhospitably; after a pause she inquired: “What do you wish?”
“Monsieur Boivin.”
“He lives here. What do you want of Monsieur Boivin?”
Patissot was embarrassed, and hesitated.
“Why—he expects me.”
Her manner became fiercer and she replied: “Oh! you’re the one, are you, who is coming for breakfast?”
He stammered a trembling “Yes.” Turning toward the house she yelled:
“Boivin, here’s the man!”
Boivin instantly appeared in the doorway of a sort of plaster structure, covered with tin, that looked something like a chaufferette. He wore a pair of soiled white trousers and a dirty straw hat. He shook hands with Patissot and carried him off to what he proudly termed his garden; it was a little piece of ground about as big as a handkerchief, surrounded by houses. The sun shone on it only two or three hours every day; pansies, carnations, and a few rosebushes vegetated in this dark well, heated like a furnace by the radiation of the sun on the roofs. “We have no trees,” he said, “but the high walls are just as good, and it is as shady here as in the woods.”
Then, laying his hand on Patissot’s arm, he said: “Will you do me a favor? You’ve seen the old woman—she isn’t very easy, is she? But you haven’t heard all, wait till breakfast. Just think, to keep me at home, she locks up my office suit and lets me have only clothes that are too soiled to wear in the city. Today I’m dressed decently because I told her that you were coming. That’s understood. But I cannot water the flowers for fear of soiling my trousers, and if I do that I’m lost! I thought you might do it for me.”
Patissot consented, took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and began to work the pump, that wheezed and blew like a consumptive and gave out a stream of water about as big as his little finger. It took ten minutes to fill the watering-can. Patissot was dripping with perspiration. Boivin directed his efforts. “Here, water this plant—a little more. That’s enough! Now to this one.”
The can leaked, and Patissot’s feet got more water than the flowers, so that the edges of his trousers were soaked with mud. Twenty times at least he went to and fro, wetting his feet, and perspiring violently whenever he worked the pump handle; and when he was exhausted and wished to stop, old Boivin would pull him by the sleeve, and plead: “Just one more can, just one, and that will be enough.”
As a reward, he gave him a full-blown rose which lost all its petals as soon as it came in contact with Patissot’s coat, leaving in his buttonhole a sort of greenish pear, that caused him great surprise. He didn’t care to make any comment, however, out of politeness, and Boivin did not appear to notice it.
Suddenly Madame Boivin’s voice rang out: “Well! are you coming? How many times shall I tell you that it’s ready?”
They walked toward the chaufferette, trembling like two culprits.
If the garden was shady the house was not, and the heat of the rooms was worse than that of an oven.
Three plates, flanked with greasy forks and knives, had been laid on a dirty wooden table, in the middle of which stood a dish filled with soup-meat and potatoes floating around in some sort of liquid. They sat down and began to eat.
A large decanter filled with pinkish water attracted Patissot’s eye. Boivin, slightly embarrassed, mentioned it to his wife saying: “Dear, couldn’t you give us today a little pure wine?”
She eyed him furiously, then burst out:
“So that you can both get drunk, I suppose, and carouse here all day? No, thank you!” He said no more. After the ragout the woman brought in another dish of potatoes prepared with rancid lard, and when, still silent, they had finished, she declared:
“That’s all there is. Now get out.”
Boivin stared at her in amazement.
“What has happened to the pigeon you were picking this morning?” he inquired.
She put her hands on her hips.
“You haven’t had enough, I suppose? Is it a reason, because you bring people here, to eat up everything there is in the house? What do you think I’ll have to eat tonight, sir?”
The two men arose and stood in the doorway. Boivin whispered in Patissot’s ear:
“Wait for me a minute, and we’ll set out.” He went into the next room to finish dressing, and Patissot overheard the following dialogue:
“Give me twenty sous, dear.”
“What do you want them for?”
“Why, I don’t know what may happen; it is always safer to have some money.”
She screamed so as to be heard outside: “No, sir, I shan’t give it to you. After this man has breakfasted here, the least he can do is to pay your expenses.”
Boivin joined Patissot; the latter, wishing to be polite, bowed to the mistress of
