THE AMERICAN
What's the use of my saying anything? It would only irritate her and drive her to some coup de tête. She's very clever, like her poor mother; she would waste no time about it. As a child—when I was happy, or supposed I was—she studied drawing and painting with first-class professors, and they assured me she had the gift. I was delighted to believe it, and when I went into society I used to carry her little water-colours with me in a portfolio and hand them round to the company. I remember how a lady once thought I was offering them for sale and that I took it very ill. We don't know what we may come to! Then came my dark days and my final rupture with Madame Nioche. Noémie had no more twenty-franc lessons; but in the course of time, when she grew older and it became highly expedient that she should do something that would help to keep us alive, she bethought herself of her palette and brushes. Some of our friends in the quartier pronounced the idea fantastic: they recommended her to try bonnet-making, to get a situation in a shop, or—if she was more ambitious—to advertise for a place of dame de compagnie. She did advertise, and an old lady wrote her a letter and bade her come and see her. The old lady liked her and made her an offer of her living and six hundred francs a year; but Noémie discovered that she passed her life in her arm-chair and had only two visitors, her confessor and her nephew: the confessor very strict, and the nephew a man of fifty, with a broken nose and a government clerkship of two thousand francs. She threw her old lady over, bought a paint-box, a canvas and a new
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