IRST as lessees, then (as their means increased) as owners, Prevost and his wife have administered the eating-house down in the old-fashioned southwest quarter of the city for more than twenty years.
Prevost rented the place just after his marriage to his pretty Marie; his means were small, but his courage was great. Few shared his own confidence that he would succeed; and in the beginning he certainly had hard work. But he was honest, energetic, and resolute. Above all, he was cheerful, and devoted to his business and his customers. He gave good food, most of which he cooked admirably himself; he furnished excellent Bordeaux wine, imported by himself from Bordeaux, where he was born. His voice was pleasant and hearty; his broad, ruddy cheeks dimpled when he smiled, and the smile itself disclosed white, even teeth. During business hours he always wore an immaculate white apron or pinafore. You saw at the first glance that he was a guileless, kindly creature, and when he exchanged a glance or a word with his wife, you understood that his cheerfulness was no professional pretence, but was the result of true happiness—the happiness of a loving husband who believes himself loved. He adored Marie from the first; he has never ceased to adore her. He married her when she was but a year out of the convent, and she has been the sole queen of his heart and the end of his activities ever since. There she sits, at the pay-desk in the centre of the big low-ceiled room, where she has sat for twenty years, rosy and plump now like her husband, and a right handsome woman always. Beyond doubt she is a happy woman—happy in her husband, happy in her three healthy children, who are always sweet and clean as fresh milk; and happy, too, in her position, sitting there at her pay-desk day after day, in the midst of the broad, cheerful room, with some fourscore good-humored, effervescent guests eating good dinners all around her, chattering light-heartedly as they sip their good claret, laying down their good money on the desk, and getting back their change from her plump, pretty fingers, and pausing to exchange a few compliments and witticisms with her; for they are all her friends, and she is theirs. They look into her smiling brown eyes, and see nothing there but contentment, kindness, and modesty. How, indeed, could it be otherwise?
“I have taken my dinners here almost from the first,” says an elderly Frenchman, a patriot of '48, to his companion, a young artist, whom he has just introduced there. “It has always been the same. The best eating-house in town—that you can see for yourself; but also the happiest ménage. They were born for each other, she and Prevost; I give it you in a word.”
“I should have said, though,” remarks the artist, who has kept his eyes upon the pretty hostess with some intentness, “that she was a touch above him—eh? Might have done better with herself, socially speaking? He is a good honest fellow, but there must have been a refinement about her when she was a girl—a delicacy—eh? Consider that nose, now.”
“Ah-bah! I tell you of twenty years of wedded felicity, and you would have me consider a nose! What it is to be an artist!”
The artist laughs. And with that comes along Prevost on his rounds. For it has always been his custom from the first to go from table to table, to satisfy himself that his guests are being well served. He has a word for each. “Is the dish cooked to suit you, sir?” or (to a waiter), “Take back that potato and bring a mealier one”; or, “Madame, your shopping has a little tired you—a glass of my Bordeaux wine will make you your good self again”; or, “Permit me to present your little boy with this red apple—red apples make little boys into great men.” To the artist he says, “I hope we content you, sir; that you will often come to us again.”
“Assuredly, Monsieur Prevost. But may I ask why a man so prosperous as you does not move up town, to some more fashionable neighborhood? You would make ten times the money.”
Prevost smiles broadly, and wisely shakes his head.
“Ah, no, no! We have been happy here, my good wife and I, and we are happy; and with what face should we leave our good friends who have made us our prosperity? This is our place in the world, and here we will live and enjoy with our friends till the good God says 'Come.' And even then— Well, you will laugh, monsieur, but I will tell you what I say to my good wife. I say, 'Marie, let us pray that the good God, when we die, will give us in heaven just such an eating-house as this, where we may serve our old friends just as we do here.' Yes, we are truly very happy.”