Those who know woman best never assume to reduce her to the logical rules which govern the mathematical mind, but are always prepared for the little eccentricities which render her at once so charming and uncertain. The Frenchwoman perhaps carries this uncertainty to a higher state of perfection than her sex of any other nationality.
That Mlle. Fouchette was the possessor of that indefinable something people call heart had never been so much as suspected by those with whom she had come in intimate contact. It had certainly never inconvenienced her up to this time. To have gone to her for sympathy would have been deemed absurd. Even in her intense enjoyment of "la vie joyeuse" her natural coldness did not endear her to those who shared her society for the moment. As a reigning favorite of the Bohemian set she would have earned the dislike of her sex; but this was greatly accentuated by her repute as an honest girl. The worst of these "filles du quartier" observed the proprieties, were sticklers for the forms of respectability. And Mlle. Fouchette, who was really good, trampled upon everything and everybody that stood in her way.
As to her income from the studios, bah! and again bah!
Then what was Mlle. Fouchette?
That was the universal feminine inquiry.
Mlle. Fouchette appeared to Jean Marot in a vaguely kaleidoscopic way as a woman of no account possessing good points. Sometimes she appeared to be cold, sly, vicious, and wholly unconscionable; again, good-hearted, self-sacrificing, sympathetic. But he did not bother about her particularly, though he covertly watched her this morning preparing breakfast. It was true, her blonde hair did not look as if it had been touched by comb or brush, that she wore pantoufles that exposed holes in the heels of her stockings, that her wrapper was soiled and gaped horribly between buttons on and off its frontage; but, then, what woman is perfect before breakfast?
All this did not seriously detract from the fact that she had gone out of her way to look after him the day before. Nor did it explain that she had this morning invested herself with these slovenly belongings, taken in the demi-litre of milk that ornamented her door-knob, gone down into the street for additional "petits pains," added a couple of eggs "à la coque" to the usual morning menu, set Poupon to work on the café-au-lait, and was now putting the finishing touches to her little table in anticipation of the appetite of her awaking guest.
"Bonjour, my little housekeeper."
"Ah! bonjour, Monsieur Jean. Have you rested well? What a lazy man! You look well this morning, monsieur."
"Oh, yes; and why not, mon enfant?" said he, straightening up somewhat stiffly.