CHAPTER 4

Madam Métier Is Discouraged

Having thus discovered nothing, Madame Métier decided the following day that the least she could do was clean up her workroom.

Because of the previous day’s explosion, the sunroom was now a full-blown disaster. Leaves and seeds were everywhere. In fact, it was in such a shambles that when she returned, she actually thought for a minute that vandals had come in while she was gone, and, in a mad search for money, had topsy-turvied everything.

She stared at her table, trying to sort out the recipe cards, of which she had six colors, but she couldn’t find the box for them, and, besides, should she sort them by color, by the primary content of the recipe, or by the ailment for which it was a remedy? She couldn’t tell. And so, without deciding or arranging anything, she moved on to the piles of petals and leaves she had stripped from the plants she was drying. Should she put them all in white medicine boxes, or small round tins?—she couldn’t tell. And what about her fluids and oils—now that they had been opened? Where, and how, and in what should she store them? She couldn’t decide that either.

She was surrounded by chaos, and the more she tried to correct it, the more impossible it seemed. She realized, in fact, that she had no idea at all of how to even begin to get it organized. Discouraged almost to the point of crying, she got up from her table, closed the door to her workroom, put on her new red bathing suit, and headed for the beach.