“What romances, even those that are most famous, can equal such realities?” he thought.  “What a life it will be to relieve the burden of such existences, to seek out causes and effects and remedy them, calming sorrows, helping good; to incarnate one’s own being in misery; to familiarize one’s self with homes like that; to act out constantly in life those dramas which move us so in fiction!  I never imagined that good could be more interesting, more piquant than vice.”

“Is monsieur satisfied with his breakfast?” asked Madame Vauthier, who now, with Felicite’s assistance, brought the table close to Godefroid.

Godefroid then saw a cup of excellent cafe au lait with a smoking omelet, fresh butter, and little red radishes.

“Where the devil did you get those radishes?” he asked.

“They were given me by Monsieur Cartier,” answered Madame Vauthier; “and I make a present of them to monsieur.”

“And what are you going to ask me for such a breakfast daily?”

“Well now, monsieur, be fair,—­I couldn’t do it for less than thirty sous.”

“Very good, thirty sous then;” said Godefroid; “but how is it that they ask me only forty-five francs a month for dinner, close by here at Machillot’s?  That is the same price you ask me for breakfast.”

“But what a difference, monsieur, between preparing a dinner for fifteen or twenty persons and going out to get you just what you want for breakfast!  See here! there’s a roll, eggs, butter, the cost of lighting a fire, sugar, milk, coffee!—­just think! they ask you sixteen sous for a cup of coffee alone on the place de l’Odeon, and then you have to give a sou or two to the waiter.  Here you have no trouble; you can breakfast in slippers.”

“Very well, very well,” said Godefroid.

“Without Madame Cartier who supplies me with milk and eggs and herbs I couldn’t manage it.  You ought to go and see their establishment, monsieur.  Ha! it’s fine!  They employ five journeymen gardeners, and Nepomucene goes there in summer to draw water for them; they hire him of me as a waterer.  They make lots of money out of melons and strawberries.  It seems monsieur takes quite an interest in Monsieur Bernard,” continued the widow in dulcet tones; “or he wouldn’t be responsible for his debts.  Perhaps he doesn’t know all that family owes.  There’s the lady who keeps the circulating library on the place Saint-Michel; she is always coming here after thirty francs they owe her,—­and she needs it, God knows!  That sick woman in there, she reads, reads, reads!  Two sous a volume makes thirty francs in three months.”

“That means a hundred volumes a month,” said Godefroid.