Shortly afterwards he introduced a middle-aged acquaintance named Carlier, the secretary-general of his newspaper, who wished to rent a bedroom.  Thus by good fortune Sophia let all her rooms immediately, and was sure of over two hundred francs a month, apart from the profit on meals supplied.  On this latter occasion Chirac (and his companion too) was quite optimistic, reiterating an absolute certitude that Paris could never be invested.  Briefly, Sophia did not believe him.  She believed the candidly despairing Chirac.  She had no information, no wide theory, to justify her pessimism; nothing but the inward conviction that the race capable of behaving as she had seen it behave in the Place de la Concorde, was bound to be defeated.  She loved the French race; but all the practical Teutonic sagacity in her wanted to take care of it in its difficulties, and was rather angry with it for being so unfitted to take care of itself.

She let the men talk, and with careless disdain of their discussions and their certainties she went about her business of preparation.  At this period, overworked and harassed by novel responsibilities and risks, she was happier, for days together, than she had ever been, simply because she had a purpose in life and was depending upon herself.  Her ignorance of the military and political situation was complete; the situation did not interest her.  What interested her was that she had three men to feed wholly or partially, and that the price of eatables was rising.  She bought eatables.  She bought fifty pecks of potatoes at a franc a peck, and another fifty pecks at a franc and a quarter—­double the normal price; ten hams at two and a half francs a pound; a large quantity of tinned vegetables and fruits, a sack of flour, rice, biscuits, coffee, Lyons sausage, dried prunes, dried figs, and much wood and charcoal.  But the chief of her purchases was cheese, of which her mother used to say that bread and cheese and water made a complete diet.  Many of these articles she obtained from her grocer.  All of them, except the flour and the biscuits, she stored in the cellar belonging to the flat; after several days’ delay, for the Parisian workmen were too elated by the advent of a republic to stoop to labour, she caused a new lock to be fixed on the cellar-door.  Her activities were the sensation of the house.  Everybody admired, but no one imitated.

One morning, on going to do her marketing, she found a notice across the shuttered windows of her creamery in the Rue Notre Dame de Lorette:  “Closed for want of milk.”  The siege had begun.  It was in the closing of the creamery that the siege was figured for her; in this, and in eggs at five sous a piece.  She went elsewhere for her milk and paid a franc a litre for it.  That evening she told her lodgers that the price of meals would be doubled, and that if any gentleman thought that he could get equally good meals elsewhere, he was at liberty to get them elsewhere.  Her position was strengthened by the appearance of another candidate for a room, a friend of Niepce.  She at once offered him her own room, at a hundred and fifty francs a month.