These menus vary according to the inspiration that may have seized Madame
Prune. But one thing never varies, either in our household or in any
other, neither in the north nor in the south of the Empire, and that is
the dessert and the manner of eating it: after all these little dishes,
which are a mere make-believe, a wooden bowl is brought in, bound with
copper--an enormous bowl, fit for Gargantua, and filled to the very brim
with rice, plainly cooked in water. Chrysantheme fills another large
bowl from it (sometimes twice, sometimes three times), darkens its snowy
whiteness with a black sauce flavored with fish, which is contained in a
delicately shaped blue cruet, mixes it all together, carries the bowl to
her lips, and crams down all the rice, shovelling it with her two chop-
sticks into her very throat. Next the little cups and covers are picked
up, as well as the tiniest crumb that may have fallen upon the white
mats, the irreproachable purity of which nothing is allowed to tarnish.
And so ends the dinner.




CHAPTER XXIII

A FANTASTIC FUNERAL

Below, in the town, a street-singer had established herself in a little
thoroughfare; people had gathered around her to listen to her singing,
and we three--that is, Yves, Chrysantheme, and I--who happened to be
passing, stopped also.

She was quite young, rather fat, and fairly pretty, and she strummed her
guitar and sang, rolling her eyes fiercely, like a virtuoso executing