Madame Panpan received us most graciously, setting chairs for us, and apologising for her husband, who, poor man, was sitting up in his bed, with a wan countenance, and hollow glistening eyes. We were in the close heavy air of a sick chamber. The room was very small, and the bedstead occupied a large portion of its space. It was lighted by one little window only, and that looked down a sort of square shaft which served as a ventilator to the house. A pale child, with large wandering eyes, watched us intently from behind the end of the little French bedstead, while the few toys he had been playing with lay scattered upon the floor. The room was very neat, although its furniture was poor and scanty; and by the brown saucepan perched upon the top of the diminutive German stove, which had strayed, as it were, from its chimney corner into the middle of the room, we knew that the pot-au-feu was in preparation. Madame, before whom was a small table covered with the unfinished portions of a corset, was very agreeable—rather coquettish, indeed, we should have said in England. Her eyes were bright and cheerful, and her hair drawn back from her forehead à la Chinoise. In a graceful, but decided way, she apologised for continuing her labours, which were evidently works of necessity rather than of choice.
“And Victor, that good boy,” she exclaimed, when we had further explained the object of our visit, “was quite well! I am charmed! And he had found work, and succeeding so well in his affairs? I am enchanted! It is so amiable of him to send me this little cadeau!”
Monsieur Panpan, with his strange lustrous eyes, if not enchanted, rubbed his thin bony hands together as he sat up in the bed, and chuckled in an unearthly way at the good news. Having executed our commission, we felt it would be intrusive to prolong our stay, and therefore rose to depart, but received so pressing an invitation to repeat the visit, that, on the part of myself and friend, who was to leave Paris in a few days, I could not refuse to comply with a wish so cordially expressed, and evidently sincere. And thus commenced my acquaintance with the Panpans.
I cannot trace the course of our acquaintance, or tell how, from an occasional call, my visits became those of a bosom friend; but certain it is, that soon each returning Sunday saw me a guest at the table of Monsieur Panpan, where my couvert and serviette became sacred to my use; and, after the meal, were carefully cleaned and laid apart for the next occasion. This, I afterwards learned, was a customary mark of consideration towards an esteemed friend among the poorer class of Parisians. I soon learned their history. Their every-day existence was a simple, easily read story, and not the less simple and touching because it is the every-day story of thousands of poor French families. Madame was a stay-maker; and the whole care and responsibility of providing for the wants and comforts of a sick husband; for her little Victor, her eldest born; and the monthly stipend of her infant Henri, out at nurse some hundred leagues from Paris, hung upon the unaided exertions of her single hands, and the scrupulous and wonderful economy of her management.