I started back.

“And you have bought it?” cried I.

“For nothing,” replied he, lowering his voice.  “These brokers are asses; mine mistook this for a student’s copy; he let me have it for fifty louis, ready money!  This morning I took them to him, and now he wishes to be off the bargain.”

“This morning!” repeated I, involuntarily casting my eyes on the letter containing the refusal that M. Antoine had made me write to his son’s widow, which was still on the little table.

He took no notice of my exclamation, and went on contemplating the work of Jordaens in an ecstasy.

“What a knowledge of chiaroscuro!” he murmured, biting his last crust in delight.  “What relief! what fire!  Where can one find such transparency of color! such magical lights! such force! such nature!”

As I was listening to him in silence, he mistook my astonishment for admiration, and clapped me on the shoulder.

“You are dazzled,” said he merrily; “you did not expect such a treasure!  What do you say to the bargain I have made?”

“Pardon me,” replied I, gravely; “but I think you might have done better.”

M. Antoine raised his head.

“How!” cried he; “do you take me for a man likely to be deceived about the merit or value of a painting?”

“I neither doubt your taste nor your skill; but I cannot help thinking that, for the price of this picture of a family party, you might have had—­”

“What then?”

“The family itself, sir.”

The old amateur cast a look at me, not of anger, but of contempt.  In his eyes I had evidently just proved myself a barbarian, incapable of understanding the arts, and unworthy of enjoying them.  He got up without answering me, hastily took up the Jordaens, and replaced it in its hiding-place behind the prints.

It was a sort of dismissal; I took leave of him, and went away.

Seven o’clock.—­When I come in again, I find my water boiling over my lamp, and I busy myself in grinding my Mocha, and setting out my coffee-things.

The getting coffee ready is the most delicate and most attractive of domestic operations to one who lives alone:  it is the grand work of a bachelor’s housekeeping.

Coffee is, so to say, just the mid-point between bodily and spiritual nourishment.  It acts agreeably, and at the same time, upon the senses and the thoughts.  Its very fragrance gives a sort of delightful activity to the wits; it is a genius that lends wings to our fancy, and transports it to the land of the Arabian Nights.

When I am buried in my old easy-chair, my feet on the fender before a blazing fire, my ear soothed by the singing of the coffee-pot, which seems to gossip with my fire-irons, the sense of smell gently excited by the aroma of the Arabian bean, and my eyes shaded by my cap pulled down over them, it often seems as if each cloud of the fragrant steam took a distinct form.  As in the mirages of the desert, in each as it rises, I see some image of which my mind had been longing for the reality.