In fact, she often bemoaned herself that she couldn't be miserly.

At her last dinner she had related how, after struggling ten minute and enduring martyrdom, she had ended by giving ten francs to a poor workwoman whom she knew, positively, had been without food for two days.
"Nature," she said naively, "is stronger than reason." The soup was a rather pale bouillon; for, even on an occasion like this, the cook had been enjoined to make a great deal of bouillon out of the beef supplied.

Then, as the said beef was to feed the family on the next day and the day after that, the less juice it expended in the bouillon, the more substantial were the subsequent dinners.

The beef, little cooked, was always taken away at the following speech from Brigitte, uttered as soon as Thuillier put his knife into it:-- "I think it is rather tough; send it away, Thuillier, nobody will eat it; we have other things." The soup was, in fact, flanked by four viands mounted on old hot-water chafing-dishes, with the plating worn off.

At this particular dinner (afterwards called that of the candidacy) the first course consisted of a pair of ducks with olives, opposite to which was a large pie with forcemeat balls, while a dish of eels "a la tartare" corresponded in like manner with a fricandeau on chicory.