Finally la colazione is spread on our table by the window. A neat white cloth covers it, and we have gold-rimmed plates and cups of delicate china. There is a pot of honey, an egg a la coque for each, a plate of brown and white bread, on some days a dish of scarlet cherries on a bed of green, on others a mound of luscious berries in their frills; sometimes, too, we have a bowl of tiny wild strawberries that seem to have grown with their faces close pressed to the flowers, so sweet and fragrant are they.
This al fresco morning meal makes a delicious prelude to our comfortable dejeuner a la fourchette at one o'clock, when the Little Genius, if not absorbed in some unusually exacting piece of work, joins us and gives zest to the repast. Her own breakfast, she explains, is a dejeuner a la thumb, the sort enjoyed by the peasant who carves a bit of bread and cheese in his hand, and she promises us a sight, some leisure day, of a certain dejeuner a la toothpick celebrated for the moment among the artists. Amysterious painter, shabby, but of a certain elegance and distinction even in his poverty, comes daily at noon into a well-known restaurant. He buys for five sous a glass of chianti, a roll for one sou, and with stately grace bestows another sou upon the waiter who serves him. These preparations made, he breaks the roll in small bits, and poising them delicately on the point of a wooden toothpick, he dips them in wine before eating them.
"This may be a frugal repast," he has an air of saying, "but it is at least refined, and no man would dare insult me by asking me whether or not I leave the table satisfied."