rapes," said Madame Hochon to her
granddaughter.

Joseph looked at the two young men as much as to say: "Is it to such
high living as this that you owe your healthy faces?"

Baruch understood the keen glance and smiled; for he and his cousin
Hochon were behaving with much discretion. The home-life was of less
importance to youths who supped three times the week at Mere
Cognette's. Moreover, just before dinner, Baruch had received notice
that the grand master convoked the whole Order at midnight for a
magnificent supper, in the course of which a great enterprise would be
arranged. The feast of welcome given by old Hochon to his guests
explains how necessary were the nocturnal repasts at the Cognette's to
two young fellows blessed with good appetites, who, we may add, never
missed any of them.

"We will take the liqueur in the salon," said Madame Hochon, rising
and motioning to Joseph to give her his arm. As they went out before
the others, she whispered to the painter:--

"Eh! my poor boy; this dinner won't give you an indigestion; but I had
hard work to get it for you. It is always Lent here; you will get
enough just to keep life in you, and no more. So you must bear it
patiently."

The kind-heartedness of the old woman, who thus drew her own
predicament, pleased the artist.

"I have lived fifty years with that man, without ever hearing
half-a-dozen gold pieces chink in my purse," she went on. "Oh! if I
did not hope that you might save your property, I would never have
brought you and your mother into my prison."

"But how can you survive it?" cried Joseph naively, with the gayety
which a French artist never loses.

"Ah, you may well ask!" she said. "I pray."

Joseph quivered as he heard the words, which raised the old woman so
much in his estimation that he stepped back a little way to look into
her face; it was radiant with so tender a serenity that he said to
her,--

"Let me paint your portrait."

"No, no," she answered, "I am too weary of life to wish to remain here
on canvas."

Gayly uttering the sad words, she opened a closet, and brought out a
flask containing ratafia, a domestic manufacture of her own, the
receipt for which she obtained from the far-famed nuns to whom is also
due the celebrated cake of Issoudun,--one of the great creations of
French confectionery; which no chef, cook, pastry-cook, or
confectioner has ever been able to reproduce. Monsieur de Riviere,
ambassador at Constantinople