In the country the special names of journals are never mentioned; they are all called by the general name of “the news.”

Rigou’s dinner, like his breakfast and supper, was always of choice delicacies, cooked with the art which distinguishes a priest’s housekeeper from all other cooks.  Madame Rigou made the butter herself twice a week.  Cream was a concomitant of many sauces.  The vegetables came at a jump, as it were, from their frames to the saucepan.  Parisians, who are accustomed to eat the fruits of the earth after they have had a second ripening in the sun of a city, infected by the air of the streets, fermenting in close shops, and watered from time to time by the market-women to give them a deceitful freshness, have little idea of the exquisite flavors of really fresh produce, to which nature has lent fugitive but powerful charms when eaten as it were alive.

The butcher of Soulanges brought his best meat under fear of losing Rigou’s custom.  The poultry, raised on the premises, was of the finest quality.

This system of secret pampering embraced everything in which Rigou was personally concerned.  Though the slippers of the knowing Thelemist were of stout leather they were lined with lamb’s wool.  Though his coat was of rough cloth it did not touch his skin, for his shirt, washed and ironed at home, was of the finest Frisian linen.  His wife, Annette, and Jean drank the common wine of the country, the wine he reserved from his own vineyards; but in his private cellar, as well stocked as the cellars of Belgium, the finest vintages of Burgundy rubbed sides with those of Bordeaux, Champagne, Roussillon, not to speak of Spanish and Rhine wines, all bought ten years in advance of use and bottled by Brother Jean.  The liqueurs in that cellar were those of the Isles, and came originally from Madame Amphoux.  Rigou had laid in a supply to last him the rest of his days, at the national sale of a chateau in Burgundy.

The ex-monk ate and drank like Louis XIV. (one of the greatest consumers of food and drink ever known), which reveals the costs of a life that was more than voluptuous.  Careful and very shrewd in managing his secret prodigalities, he disputed all purchases as only churchmen can dispute.  Instead of taking infinite precautions against being cheated, the sly monk kept patterns and samples, had the agreements reduced to writing, and warned those who forwarded his wines or his provisions that if they fell short of the mark in any way he should refuse to accept their consignments.

Jean, who had charge of the fruit-room, was trained to keep fresh the finest fruits grown in the department; so that Rigou ate pears and apples and sometimes grapes, at Easter.

No prophet regarded as a God was ever more blindly obeyed than was Rigou in his own home.  A mere motion of his black eyelashes could plunge his wife, Annette, and Jean into the deepest anxiety.  He held his three slaves by the multiplicity of their many duties, which were like a chain in his hands.  These poor creatures were under the perpetual yoke of some ordered duty, with an eye always on them; but they had come to take a sort of pleasure in accomplishing these tasks, and did not suffer under them.  All three had the comfort and well-being of that one man before their minds as the sole end and object of all their thoughts.