Agathe soon acquired the monotonous regularity of life which becomes a
stay and a support to those who have endured the shock of violent
sorrows. In the morning, after doing up her room, in which there were
no longer cats and little birds, she prepared the breakfast at her own
fire and carried it into the studio, where she ate it with her son.
She then arranged Joseph's bedroom, put out the fire in her own
chamber, and brought her sewing to the studio, where she sat by the
little iron stove, leaving the room if a comrade or a model entered
it. Though she understood nothing whatever of art, the silence of the
studio suited her. In the matter of art she made not the slightest
progress; she attempted no hypocrisy; she was utterly amazed at the
importance they all attached to color, composition, drawing. When the
Cenacle friends or some brother-painter, like Schinner, Pierre
Grassou, Leon de Lora,--a very youthful "rapin" who was called at that
time Mistigris,--discussed a picture, she would come back afterwards,
examine it attentively, and discover nothing to justify their fine
words and their hot disputes. She made her son's shirts, she mended
his stockings, she even cleaned his palette, supplied him with rags to
wipe his brushes, and kept things in order in the studio. Seeing how
much thought his mother gave to these little details, Joseph heaped
attentions upon her in return. If mother and son had no sympathies in
the matter of art, they were at least bound together by signs of
tenderness.
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