As he knew nothing of the kind in the neighborhood, they wandered along the boulevard, and ended by going into a wine-shop where there was a dining-room. She had seen through the window two bareheaded girls seated at tables with two soldiers. Three cab-drivers were dining at the further end of the long and narrow room, and an individual impossible to classify under any calling was smoking, stretched on a chair, with his legs stuck out in front of him, his hands in the waist-band of his trousers, and his head thrown back over the top bar. His jacket was a museum of stains, and in his swollen pockets could be noted the neck of a bottle, a piece of bread, a parcel wrapped up in a newspaper, and a dangling piece of string. He had thick, tangled, curly hair, gray with scurf, and his cap was on the floor under his chair.
The entrance of Clotilde created a sensation, due to the elegance of her toilet. The couples ceased whispering together, the three cab-drivers left off arguing, and the man who was smoking, having taken his pipe from his mouth and spat in front of him, turned his head slightly to look.
Madame de Marelle murmured: "It is very nice; we shall be very comfortable here. Another time I will dress like a work-girl." And she sat down, without embarrassment or disgust, before the wooden table, polished by the fat of dishes, washed by spilt liquors, and cleaned by a wisp of the waiter's napkin. Duroy, somewhat ill at ease, and slightly ashamed, sought a peg to hang his tall hat on. Not finding one, he put it on a chair.
They had a ragout, a slice of melon, and a salad. Clotilde repeated: "I delight in this. I have low tastes. I like this better than the Café Anglais." Then she added: "If you want to give me complete enjoyment, you will take me to a dancing place. I know a very funny one close by called the Reine Blanche."
Duroy, surprised at this, asked: "Whoever took you there?"
He looked at her and saw her blush, somewhat disturbed, as though this sudden question had aroused within her some delicate recollections. After one of these feminine hesitations, so short that they can scarcely be guessed, she replied: "A friend of mine," and then, after a brief silence, added, "who is dead." And she cast down her eyes with a very natural sadness.
Duroy, for the first time, thought of all that he did not know as regarded the past life of this woman. Certainly she already had lovers, but of what kind, in what class of society? A vague jealousy, a species of enmity awoke within him; an enmity against all that he did not know, all that had not belonged to him. He looked at her, irritated at the mystery wrapped up within that pretty, silent head, which was thinking, perhaps, at that very moment, of the other, the others, regretfully. How he would have liked to have looked into her recollections—to have known all.
She repeated: "Will you take me to the Reine Blanche? That will be a perfect treat."
He thought: "What matters the past? I am very foolish to bother about it," and smilingly replied: "Certainly, darling."
When they were in the street she resumed, in that low and mysterious tone in which confidences are made: "I dared not ask you this until now, but you cannot imagine how I love these escapades in places ladies do not go to. During the carnival I will dress up as a schoolboy. I make such a capital boy."