He had gone straight to their usual table at the end of the café, on the left, where he shook hands with a pale, thin, young man, whose pert girlish face was lighted up by a pair of winning, satirical grey eyes, which at times flashed like steel. They all sat down and ordered beer, after which the painter resumed:
‘Do you know that I went to look for you at your father’s; and a nice reception he gave me.’
Fagerolles, who affected a low devil-may-care style, slapped his thighs. ‘Oh, the old fellow plagues me! I hooked it this morning, after a row. He wants me to draw some things for his beastly zinc stuff. As if I hadn’t enough zinc stuff at the Art School.’
This slap at the professors delighted the young man’s friends. He amused them and made himself their idol by dint of alternate flattery and blame. His smile went from one to the other, while, by the aid of a few drops of beer spilt on the table, his long nimble fingers began tracing complicated sketches. His art evidently came very easily to him; it seemed as if he could do anything with a turn of the hand.
‘And Gagnière?’ asked Mahoudeau; ‘haven’t you seen him?’
‘No; I have been here for the last hour.’
Just then Jory, who had remained silent, nudged Sandoz, and directed his attention to a girl seated with a gentleman at a table at the back of the room. There were only two other customers present, two sergeants, who were playing cards. The girl was almost a child, one of those young Parisian hussies who are as lank as ever at eighteen. She suggested a frizzy poodle—with the shower of fair little locks that fell over her dainty little nose, and her large smiling mouth, set between rosy cheeks. She was turning over the leaves of an illustrated paper, while the gentleman accompanying her gravely sipped a glass of Madeira; but every other minute she darted gay glances from over the newspaper towards the band of artists.
‘Pretty, isn’t she?’ whispered Jory. ‘Who is she staring at? Why, she’s looking at me.’
But Fagerolles suddenly broke in: ‘I say, no nonsense. Don’t imagine that I have been here for the last hour merely waiting for you.’
The others laughed; and lowering his voice he told them about the girl, who was named Irma Bécot. She was the daughter of a grocer in the Rue Montorgueil, and had been to school in the neighbourhood till she was sixteen, writing her exercises between two bags of lentils, and finishing off her education on her father’s doorstep, lolling about on the pavement, amidst the jostling of the throng, and learning all about life from the everlasting tittle-tattle of the cooks, who retailed all the scandal of the neighbourhood while waiting for five sous’ worth of Gruyère cheese to be served them. Her mother having died, her father himself had begun to lead rather a gay life, in such wise that the whole of the grocery stores—tea, coffee, dried vegetables, and jars and drawers of sweetstuff—were gradually devoured. Irma was still going to school, when, one day, the place was sold up. Her father died of a fit of apoplexy, and Irma sought refuge with a poor aunt, who gave her more kicks than halfpence, with the result that she ended by running away, and taking her flight through all the dancing-places of Montmartre and Batignolles.