“I am overcome with bewilderment. Who would have known that they weren’t simply two ordinary bourgeoises? There wasn’t anything rowdy or shocking about them.”
“What! The rouge? The ribbons? The bulging eyes?”
“Oh, I wasn’t thinking of that one. I didn’t care much for her. Still, even she looked no worse than—well, a shop-girl. But the other, the little one. I shouldn’t have been surprised to meet her anywhere,—at Madame X———’s, at Madame de Z———-’.. She was dressed so quietly, in such good taste. Her manners were so subdued, almost English. And her face,—it’s a face that would strike you anywhere. So delicate, refined, so quaint and interesting. She doesn’t rouge. And such lovely hair! Oh, I am sure she is full of good qualities. What a shame and horror it is that... that... It makes one feel inclined to loathe your whole sex.”
Elinor’s commentary at this point became a lamentation, which it would be irrelevant to repeat. “I must get her to tell me her story,” was its conclusion.
“Oh, she’ll tell you her story fast enough, only, I warn you, it will be a pack of lies. The truth isn’t in them, those little puppets. Don’t cherish any illusions about her. The most one can say for her is that she’s a fairly harmless example of a desperately bad class. The grisette of Musset, of Henry Murger, exists no longer, even if she ever did exist. To-day Zizi was on her good behaviour. Sunday, I hope for the sake of science, she’ll get off it, and be her wicked little self. Yes, her face is remarkable, but it’s an absurd accident, a slip of nature: not one of the qualities it would seem to indicate is anywhere in her—neither wit nor humour nor emotion. She’s just a little undersized cat; not a kitten: she has none of the innocent gentleness of a kitten: an undergrown, hard, sprightly little cat. However, she can be amusing enough when she’s roused; and on Sunday we are likely to have a merry breakfast.” But herein I proved myself a false prophet. We were still at the hors d’ouvres when Zizi began to cry. She had coughed; and Elinor had asked her if she had a cold; and that question precipitated a flood of tears. This was dispiriting. It is always dispiriting to see one of these creatures anything but gay and flippant: serious feeling is so crudely, so garishly, at variance with your preconception of them, with the mood in which you approach them. And yet they cry a good deal,—mostly, however, tears of mere spite or vexed vanity; or, it may be, of hysteria, for they are frightfully subject to what they call crises de nerfs. But Zizi’s tears now were of a different water. Had she a cold? Oh, no, it was worse than that. The doctor said her lungs were affected; and if she didn’t speedily change her mode of life, she must go into a decline. And this, if you please, was the dish laid on our table, there in the vulgar cabinet particulier of that shady restaurant, under the crystal gasalier, and between the four diamond-scratched looking-glasses that covered the walls,—this was the dish served to us even before the oysters; and you may imagine, therefore, with what appetite we attacked the good things that came after. The doctor had told her that she must absolutely suspend her dissipations for at least a six-month, and rest, and soigner herself, and “feed up,” or she would surely become poitrinaire. “And do nothing? How can I? Faut vivre, parbleu!” Her present friend-in-chief, she explained, was at the School of Mines; his pension from his family only amounted to two hundred and fifty francs a month; he was all that is good, he would do his utmost for her; but she couldn’t live on what he could spare her out of two hundred and fifty francs a month.
With this she went off in a regular fit of hysterics; and Elinor had her hands full, trying to bring her round. Hysterics are infectious; and Madame Germaine sat in her place, and sobbed helplessly,—not in sympathy, but by infection,—whilst her tears fell into her plate.
I saw that Elinor was tremendously distressed, and I cursed the misinspired moment when I had arranged this feast. “Terrible, terrible!” she murmured, shaking her head and looking at me with pained eyes. When at length Zizi was calm again, Elinor asked, “You won’t mind if I speak with Monsieur in English?” and then said to me, “This is quite too dreadful. We must do something for her. We must save her from consumption; and perhaps at the same time we can redeem her, make a good woman of her. She has it in her.”
I respected Elinor’s sincerity too much to laugh at the utopian quality of her optimism: so I waived the latter of her remarks, and replied only to the former. “I should be glad to do anything possible for her, but I don’t exactly see what is possible. Besides, I don’t believe she’s threatened with consumption, any more than I am. This is a pose, to make herself interestingly pathetic in your eyes, and get some money. You’ll see—she’s going to strike me for fifty francs. It’s the sum they usually ask for. And she wants to win your sanction to the gift beforehand.”
Surely enough, Zizi lifted up her tearful face, its features all puffed out and empurpled, and said at this very moment, in a whimper that ought to have hardened the softest heart, “If Monsieur could give me a little money—a couple of louis—a fifty-franc note? I could buy medicines and things.”
“Nonsense,” said I, brutally; “you’d buy chiffons and things.”