The mere chance rencontre had changed Fouchette's entire plan of life. She had bravely started for the grand boulevards with the idea of securing employment among the myriad dressmaking establishments of that neighborhood, and thus putting to practical use her industrial knowledge gained at Le Bon Pasteur.
Fortunately for her, Monsieur Marot's generous liberality had placed her beyond immediate need. A matron had equipped her with a new though simple costume and had given her a sum of money as she left,—merely saying that she acted according to instructions; but Fouchette felt that it was from her prince.
It was on the advice of Madeleine that Fouchette had secured this place in the Rue St. Jacques.
"It will make you independent and respected," said the practical grisette. "You've got the money now; you won't have it after a while. Take my advice,—fix the place up,—gradually, don't you know? You'll soon make friends who will help you if you're smart; and one must have a place to receive friends, n'est-ce pas? And the hotels garnis rob one shamefully!"
And, while Mlle. Fouchette did not dream of the real significance of this advice, she took it. The details were hers. She knew the value of a sou about as well as any woman in Paris, and no instructions were required on the subject of expenditures. She collected, piece by piece, at bottom prices, those articles which had to be purchased; made, stitch by stitch, such as required the needle.
To Mlle. Fouchette the simple, cheaply furnished and somewhat tawdry little room in the Rue St. Jacques was luxury. She was proud of it. She was perfectly contented with it. It was home.
With the confidence of one who has seen the worst and for whom every change must be for the better, Fouchette had succeeded where others would have been discouraged. This confidence to others often seemed reckless indifference, and consequently carried a certain degree of conviction.
Among a certain class of wild young men and confirmed Bohemians Fouchette had quickly achieved a sort of vogue which attaches to an eccentric woman in Paris. She was eccentric in that she danced eccentric dances, was the most reckless in the sportive circle, the highest kicker at the Bullier, and, most of all, in that she had no lovers. Unlike the Mimi Pinsons of the Murger era of the quarter, Fouchette was the most notorious of grisettes without being a grisette. At the fête of the student painters at the Bullier she had been borne on a palanquin clad only in a garland of roses amid thousands of vociferous young people of both sexes. The same night she had kicked a young man's front teeth out for presuming on liberties other girls of her set would have considered trifling.
Fouchette at once became the reigning sensation of "la vie joyeuse." Having had little or no pleasure in the world up to her entrée here, she had plunged into the gayety of the quarter with an abandon that within two short months had made the Bohemian tales of Henri Murger tame reading.
Her pedal dexterity in a quarrel had won for her the sobriquet of "La Savatière."