son a dimity vest. He is of an agreeable appearance, has good
manners and is well taught. He will do honour to his dress."

For a moment my father remained thoughtful and then he asked if it
would be quite suitable for a cook to wear a dimity vest. But M.
Coignard reminded him that, being suckled by the Muses, I would
never become a cook, and that the time was not far off when I should
wear a clerical neckband.

My father sighed, thinking that never would I be the banner-bearer
of the Guild of Parisian Cooks, and my mother became quite
glittering with pleasure and pride at the idea of her son belonging
to the Church.

The first effect my dimity vest produced was to give me a certain
confidence in myself, and to encourage me to get a more complete
idea of women than the one I had from the Eve of M. Blaizot. I
reasonably thought first on Jeannette the hurdy-gurdy player, and on
Catherine the lacemaker, both of whom I saw pass our shop twenty
times a day, showing when it rained, a fine ankle and a tiny foot,
the toes of which turned from one stone to the other. Jeannette was
not so pretty as Catherine. She was somewhat older and less well
dressed. She came from Savoy and did her hair _en marmotte_,
with a checked kerchief covering her head. But her merit was, not to
stick to ceremony and to understand what was wanted of her without
being spoken to. This character agreed well with my timidity. One
evening under the porch of St Benoit le Betourne, where there are
stone seats all round, she taught me what till then I had not known,
but which she had known for a long time.