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Updated: June 25, 2025
In the night sky lights rose in long, spreading bars of ruddy luminance, in single flashes, in sudden torches of scarlet flame rising to the clouds and touching them with rosy feathers. "'Cre nom de Dieu!" said French peasants, on the edge of all that, in villages like Gouy, Servins, Heuchin, Houdain, Grenay, Bruay, and Pernes. "The caldron is boiling up... There will be a fine pot-au-feu."
As the first principle of French culinary art is the pot-au-feu, the tails were mostly converted into soup, on which the exiles thrived and feasted.
So, they were giving out wood at last, the lack of which the night before had deprived the men of their soup! Twelve hours behind time, only! "Hurrah for the commissary!" shouted Chouteau. "Never mind, so long as it is here," said Loubet. "Ah! won't I make you a bully pot-au-feu!"
The pot that hung from the clumsy iron crane was boiling sleepily, and if the curious visitor could have peeped into it he would have seen that the little cabbage bed in the garden had contributed of its produce to the pot-au-feu. An old black cat was sitting as close to the fire as he could without singeing his whiskers, and gravely watching the simmering pot with longing eyes.
"Mighty appetizing," said Durtal, inhaling the odour of a peppery pot-au-feu, perfumed with a symphony of vegetables, of which the keynote was celery. "Everybody sit down," said Carhaix, reappearing with a clean blouse on, his face shining of soap and water. They sat down. The glowing stove purred.
Every week now, the pot-au-feu and other meats for ragouts, without any butter, eggs and other details, cost from seven to eight hundred francs. Washing also goes up so fast that eight thousand francs do not suffice. Nevertheless, I have urgent need of some things for which I should require piles of assignats."
The lunch seemed to be ready in about three minutes, and it was merely perfection. Such steak, such masterly handling of green vegetables, and such 'nuns! And the wine! There were three at table, Mimisse being the third. Mimisse partook of everything except wine. 'You see I am a woman pot-au-feu, said Cosette, not without satisfaction, in response to his praises of the meal.
To mere economy succeeded the niggardly parsimony which counts the grains of salt in the pot-au-feu, which weighs the soap for the washing, and measures the evening's allowance of candle. Gradually the accountant took the habit of treating his young wife like a servant, whose honesty is suspected; or like a child, whose thoughtlessness is to be feared.
What an irony, to heal his soul, and she comes to poison it!" "Heal his soul?" Jakapa laughed harshly. "He's had the weak lung, shell-shock, and he's a friend of the owner. Mon père, if he is here for the good of his soul, that is your province but me? I am here to boss one job, and I boss him, that's all. I hope only you have not driven the cook away, or the pot-au-feu, she will be thin."
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
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