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.

At first the vapor increases, and its color deepens.  I see a cottage on a hillside:  behind is a garden shut in by a whitethorn hedge, and through the garden runs a brook, on the banks of which I hear the bees humming.

Then the view opens still more.  See those fields planted with apple-trees, in which I can distinguish a plough and horses waiting for their master!  Farther on, in a part of the wood which rings with the sound of the axe, I perceive the woodsman’s hut, roofed with turf and branches; and, in the midst of all these rural pictures, I seem to see a figure of myself gliding about.  It is my ghost walking in my dream!

The bubbling of the water, ready to boil over, compels me to break off my meditations, in order to fill up the coffee-pot.  I then remember that I have no cream; I take my tin can off the hook and go down to the milkwoman’s.

Mother Denis is a hale countrywoman from Savoy, which she left when quite young; and, contrary to the custom of the Savoyards, she has not gone back to it again.  She has neither husband nor child, notwithstanding the title they give her; but her kindness, which never sleeps, makes her worthy of the name of mother.

A brave creature!  Left by herself in the battle of life, she makes good her humble place in it by working, singing, helping others, and leaving the rest to God.

At the door of the milk-shop I hear loud bursts of laughter.  In one of the corners of the shop three children are sitting on the ground.  They wear the sooty dress of Savoyard boys, and in their hands they hold large slices of bread and cheese.  The youngest is besmeared up to the eyes with his, and that is the reason of their mirth.

Mother Denis points them out to me.

“Look at the little lambs, how they enjoy themselves!” said she, putting her hand on the head of the little glutton.

“He has had no breakfast,” puts in one of the others by way of excuse.