Ça vous ra-ra-ravigotte!”
P’tit-Bleu stood with her hands on her hips, her arms a-kimbo, her head thrown impudently back, her eyes sparkling mischievously, her lips curling in a perpetual play of smiles, while her three subalterns accomplished their tame preliminary measures; and then P’tit-Bleu pirouetted forward, and began her own indescribable pas-seul—oh, indescribable for a hundred reasons. She wore scarlet satin slippers, embroidered with black beads, and black silk stockings with scarlet clocks, and simply cataracts and cataracts of white diaphanous frills under her demure black skirt. And she danced with constantly increasing fervour, kicked higher and higher, ever more boldly and more bravely. Presently her hat fell off, and she tossed it from her, calling to the member of the crowd who had the luck to catch it, “Tiens mon chapeau!” And then her waving black hair flowed down her back, and flew loose about her face and shoulders. And the whole time, she laughed—laughed—laughed. With her swift whirlings, her astonishing undulations, and the flashing of the red and black and white, one’s eyes were dazzled. “Ça vous met la tête en feu!” My head burned and reeled, as I watched her, and I thought, “What a delicious, bewitching little creature! What wouldn’t I give to know her!” My head burned, and my heart yearned covetously; but I was a new-comer in the Quarter, and ignorant of its easy etiquette, and terribly young and timid, and I should never have dared to speak to her without a proper introduction. She danced with constantly increasing fervour, faster, faster, furiously fast: till, suddenly—zip!—down she slid upon the floor, in the grand écart, and sat there (if one may call that posture sitting), smiling calmly up at us, whilst everybody thundered, “Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!”
In an instant, though, she was on her feet again, and had darted out of the circle to the side of the youth who had caught her hat. He offered it to her with a bow, but his pulses were thumping tempestuously, and no doubt she could read his envy in his eyes. Anyhow, all at once, she put her arm through his, and said—oh, thrills and wonders!—“Allons, mon petit, I authorise you to treat me to a bock.”
It seemed as if impossible heavens had opened to me; yet there she was, clinging to my arm, and drawing me towards the platform under the musicians’ gallery, where there are tables for the thirsty. Her little plump white hand lay on my coat-sleeve; the air was heady with the perfume of her garments; her roguish black eyes were smiling encouragement into mine; and her red lips were so near, so near, I had to fight down a wild impulse to stoop and snatch a kiss. She drew me towards the tables, and, on the way, she stopped before a mirror fixed in the wall, and rearranged her hair; while I stood close to her, still holding her hat, and waited, feeling the most exquisite proud swelling of the heart, as if I owned her. Her hair put right, she searched in her pocket and produced a small round ivory box, from which—having unscrewed its cover and handed it to me with a “Tiens ça”—she extracted a powder-puff; and therewith she proceeded gently, daintily, to dust her face and throat, examining the effect critically in the glass the while. In the end she said, “Voilà, that’s better,” and turned her face to me for corroboration. “That’s better, isn’t it?” “It’s perfect. But—but you were perfect before, too,” asseverated I. Oh, what a joy beyond measure thus to be singled out and made her confidant and adviser in these intimate affairs.... At our table, leaning back nonchalantly in her chair, as she quaffed her bock and puffed her cigarette, she looked like a bright-eyed, red-lipped bacchante.
I gazed at her in a quite unutterable ecstasy of admiration. My conscience told me that I ought to pay her a compliment upon her dancing; but I couldn’t shape one: my wits were paralysed by my emotions. I could only gaze, and gaze, and revel in my unexpected fortune. At last, however, the truth burst from me in a sort of involuntary gasp.
“But you are adorable—adorable.”
She gave a quick smile of intelligence, of sympathy, and, with a knowing toss of the head and a provoking glance, suggested, “Je te mets la tête en feu, quoi!” She, you perceive, was entirely at her ease, mistress of the situation. It is conceivable that she had met neophytes before—that I was by no means to her the unprecedented experience she was to me. At any rate, she understood my agitation and sought to reassure me. “Don’t be afraid; I’ll not eat you,” she promised.
I, in the depths of my mind, had been meditating what I could not but deem an excessively audacious proposal Her last speech gave me my cue, and I risked it.
“Perhaps you would like to eat something else? If—if we should go somewhere and sup?”
“Monsieur thinks he will be safer to take precautions,” she laughed. “Well—I submit.”