“The whole street frightened her no less than the hall and the porter's lodge. There was a face in every shop that reflected her shame and commented on her sins. At every step she had to purchase silence by groveling humility. The dealers she had not been able to repay had her in their clutches. If she said that anything was too dear, she was reminded in a bantering way that they were her masters, and that she must pay the price unless she chose to be denounced. A jest or an allusion drove the color from her cheeks. She was bound to them, compelled to trade with them and to allow them to empty her pockets as if they were accomplices. The successor of Madame Jupillon, who had gone into the grocery business at Bar-sur Aube,--the new _cremiere_,--gave her bad milk, and when she suggested that mademoiselle complained about it, and that she was found fault with every morning, the woman replied: "Much you care for your mademoiselle!" And at the fish-stall, if she smelt of a fish, and said: "This has been frozen," the reply would be: "Bah! tell me next, will you, that I let the moon shine on their gills, so's to make 'em look fresh! So these are hard days for you, eh, my duck?" Mademoiselle wanted her to go to the _Halle Centrale_ one day for her dinner, and she mentioned the fact in the fish-woman's presence. "Oho! yes, yes, to the _Halle_! I'd like to see you go to the _Halle_!" And she bestowed a glance upon her in which Germinie saw a threat to send her account to her mistress. The grocer sold her coffee that smelt of snuff, rotten prunes, dried rice and old biscuit. If she ventured to remonstrate, "Nonsense!" he would say; "an old customer like you wouldn't want to make trouble for me. Don't I tell you I give you good weight?" And he would coolly give her false weight of the goods that she ordered, and that he forced her to order.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Boil a dessert spoonful of ground coffee, in nearly a pint of milk, a quarter of an hour; then put into it a shaving or two of isinglass, and clear it. Let it boil a few minutes, and set it on the side of the fire to grow fine. This is a very fine breakfast. It should be sweetened with real Lisbon sugar of a good quality.
Sources: The passage is from Edmond de Goncourt, Germinie Lacerteux, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Rundell, New system of domestic cookery, formed upon principles of of 1806, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — forest cloth, teapot stamp.