In the course of the first few days we learned what all Dives had known for the past fifty years or so—that the focal point of interest in the inn was centred in Madame Le Mois. She drew us, as she had the country around for miles, to circle close about her green bench.

The bench was placed at the best possible point for one who, between dawn and darkness, made it the business of her life to keep her eye on her world. Not the tiniest mouse nor the most spectral shade could enter or slip away beneath the open archway without undergoing inspection from that omniscient eye, that seemed never to blink nor to grow weary. This same eye could keep its watch, also, over the entire establishment, with no need of the huge body to which it was attached moving a hair\'s-breadth. Was it Nitouche, the head-cook, who was grumbling because the kitchen-wench had not scoured the brass saucepans to the last point of mirrory brightness? Behold both Nitouche and the trembling peasant-girl, together with the brasses as evidence, all could be brought at an instant\'s call, into the open court. Were the maids—were Marianne or Lizette neglecting their work to flirt with the coachmen in the sheds yonder?

"Allons, mes filles—doucement, là-bas—et vos lits? qui les fait—les bons saints du paradis, peut-être?" And Marianne and Lizette would slink away to the waiting beds. Nothing escaped this eye. If the poule sultane was gone lame, limping in the inner quadrangle, madame\'s eye saw the trouble—a thorn in the left claw, before the feathered cripple had had time to reach her objective point, her mistress\'s capacious lap, and the healing touch of her skilful surgeon\'s fingers. Neither were the cockatoes nor the white parrots given license to make all the noise in the court-yard. When madame had an unusually loquacious moment, these more strictly professional conversationists were taught their place.

"E\'ben, toi—and thou wishest to proclaim to the world what a gymnast thou art—swinging on thy perch? Quietly, quietly, there are also others who wish to praise themselves! And now, my child, you were telling me how good you had been to your old grandmother, and how she scolded you. Well, and how about obedience to our parents, hein—how about that?" This, as the old face bent to the maiden beside her.

There was one, assuredly, who had not failed in his duty to his parents. Monsieur Paul\'s whole life, as we learned later, had been a willing sacrifice to the unconscious tyranny of his mother\'s affection. The son was gifted with those gifts which, in a Parisian atelier, would easily have made him successful, if not famous. He had the artistic endowment in an unusual degree; it was all one to him, whether he modelled in clay, or carved in wood, or stone, or built a house, or restored old bric-a-brac. He had inherited the old world roundness of artistic ability—his was the plastic renascent touch that might have developed into that of a Giotto or a Benvenuto.

It was such a sacrifice as this that he had lain at his mother\'s feet.

Think you for an instant the clever, witty, canny woman in Madame Le Mois looked upon her son\'s renouncing the world of Paris, and holding to the glories of Dives and their famous inn in the light of a sacrifice? "Parbleu!" she would explode, when the subject was touched on, "it was a lucky thing for him that Paul had had an old mother to keep him from burning his fingers. Paris! What did the provinces want with Paris? Paris had need enough of them, the great, idle, shiftless, dissipated, cruel old city, that ground all their sons to powder, and then scattered their ashes abroad like so many cinders. Oh, yes, Paris couldn\'t get along without the provinces, to plunder and rob, to seduce their sons away from living good, pure lives, and to suck these lives as a pig would a trough of fresh water! But the provinces, if they valued their souls, shunned Paris as they would the devil. And as for artists—when it came to the young of the provinces, who thought they could paint or model—

"Tenez, madame—this is what Paris does for our young. My neighbor yonder," and she pointed, as only Frenchwomen point, sticking her thumb into the air to designate a point back of her bench, "my neighbor had a son like Paul. He too was always niggling at something. He niggled so well a rich cousin sent him up to Paris. Well, in ten years he comes back, famous, rich, too, with a wife and even a child. The establishment is complete. Well, they come here to breakfast one fine morning, with his mother, whom he put at a side table, with his nurse—he is ashamed of his mother, you see. Well, then his wife talks and I hear her. \'Mais, mon Charles, c\'est toi qui est le plus fameux—il n\'y a que toi! Tu es un dieu, tu sais—il n\'y a pas deux comme toi!\' The famous one deigns to smile then, and to eat of his breakfast. His digestion had gone wrong, it appears. The Figaro had placed his name second on a certain list, after a rival\'s! He alone must be great—there must not be another god of painting save him! He! He! that\'s fine, that\'s greatness—to lose one\'s appetite because another is praised, and to be ashamed of one\'s old mother!"

Madame Le Mois\'s face, for a moment, was terrible to look upon. Even in her kindliest moments hers was a severe countenance, in spite of the true Norman curves in mouth and nostril—the laughter-loving curves. Presently, however, the fierceness of her severity melted; she had caught sight of her son. He was passing her, now, with the wine bottles for dinner piled up in his arms.