Still, and allowing for
that, the average is high. Lucien had even a great-grandmother
alive--a most worthy soul--and on Jeanne's side the grandparents
survived on both sides. Where there are grandparents they must be
maintained.
"No one builds on Ile Lezan. Luden and Jeanne--on either side their
families crowded to the very windows. If only the smallest hovel
might fall vacant! . . . For a week or two it seemed that a cottage
might drop in their way; but it happened to be what you call
picturesque, and a rich man snapped it up. He was a stranger from
Paris, and called himself an artist; but in truth he painted little,
and that poorly--as even _I_ could see. He was fonder of planning
what he would have, and what not, to indulge his mood when it should
be in the key for painting. Happening here just when the cottage
fell empty, he offered a price for it far beyond anything Lucien
could afford, and bought it. For a month or two he played with this
new toy, adding a studio and a veranda, and getting over many large
crates of furniture from the mainland. Then by and by a restlessness
overtook him--that restlessness which is the disease of the rich--and
he left us, yet professing that it delighted him always to keep his
little _pied-a-terre_ in Ile Lezan.
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