“Men that cook in copper know well how difficult is the cleaning of copper.  All cooking is a double labour unless the copper is properly tinned.”

This couplet rhymed well in the tongue he used, which was not Languedoc nor even Bearnais, but ordinary French of the north, well chosen, rhythmical, and sure.  When he had sung this couplet once, glancing, as he sang it, nobly upwards to the left and the right at the people in their houses, he paused a little, set down his kit and his pots and his pans, and leant upon his stick to rest.  A man in white clothes with a white square cap on his head ran out of a neighbouring door and gave him a saucepan, which he accepted with a solemn salute, and then, as though invigorated by such good fortune, he lifted his burdens again and made a dignified progress of some few steps forward, nearer to the place in which I stood.  He halted again and resumed his song.

It had a quality in it which savoured at once of the pathetic and of the steadfast:  its few notes recalled to me those classical themes which conceal something of dreadful fate and of necessity, but are yet instinct with dignity and with the majestic purpose of the human will, and Athens would have envied such a song.  The words were these: 

“All kinds of game, Izard, Quails, and Wild Pigeon, are best roasted upon a spit; but what spit is so clean and fresh as a spit that has been newly tinned?”

When he had sung this verse by way of challenge to the world, he halted once more and mopped his face with a great handkerchief, waiting, perhaps, for a spit to be brought; but none came.  The spits of the town were new, and though the people loved his singing, yet they were of too active and sensible a kind to waste pence for nothing.  When he saw that spits were not forthcoming he lifted up his kit again and changed his subject just by so pinch as might attract another sort of need.  He sang—­but now more violently, and as though with a worthy protest: 

     Le lievre et le lapin,
     Quand c’est bien cuit, ca fait du bien.

That is:  “Hare and rabbit, properly cooked, do one great good,” and then added after the necessary pause and with a gesture half of offering and half of disdain:  “But who can call them well cooked if the tinning of the pot has been neglected?” And into this last phrase he added notes which hinted of sadness and of disillusion.  It was very fine.

As he was now quite near me and ready, through the slackness of trade, to enter into a conversation, I came quite close and said to him, “I wish you good day,” to which he answered, “And I to you and the company,” though there was no company.

Then I said, “You sing and so advertise your trade?”

He answered, “I do.  It lifts the heart, it shortens the way, it attracts the attention of the citizens, it guarantees good work.”

“In what way,” said I, “does it guarantee good work?”