Then for the first time Roumestan perceived a stout woman in a velvet cloak and a much beplumed bonnet advancing toward him with regular reverences every three steps. Mme. Bachellery, the mother, had been a singer in a concert-garden. She had the Bordeaux accent, a little nose like her daughter’s sunk in a large face like a dish—one of those terrible mothers, who, in the company of their daughters, seem the hideous prophecy of what their beauty will come to! But Numa was not engaged in a philosophical study. He was too much engrossed by the grace of this hoyden that shone from a finished body, a body adorably finished, as well as by her theatrical slang mingled with her childlike laugh, “her sixteen-year-old laugh,” as the ladies of her acquaintance called it.
“Sixteen! then how old could she have been when she went on the stage?”
“She was born there, your Excellency. Her father, now retired, was the manager of the Folies Bordelaises.”
“A daughter of the regiment,” said Alice, showing thirty-two sparkling teeth, as close and evenly ranked as soldiers on parade.
“Alice, Alice, you forget yourself in the presence of his Excellency.”
“Let her alone—she is only a child!”
He made her sit down by him on the sofa in a kindly, almost paternal manner, complimented her on her ambition and her sentiment for real art, her desire to escape from the easy and demoralizing successes of comic opera; but then she would have to work hard and study seriously.
“O, as for that,” she answered, brandishing a roll of music, “I study two hours every day with Mme. Vauters.”
“Mme. Vauters? Yes, hers is an excellent method,” and he opened the roll of music and examined its contents with a knowing air.
“What are we singing now? Aha! The waltz of Mireille, the song of Magali. Why, they are the songs of my part of the country!”