"Ah! here is my floor," panted Madame Valière at length, with an air of indicating it to a thorough stranger. "Will you not come into my room and eat a fig? They are very healthy between meals."
Madame Dépine accepted the invitation, and entering her own corner of the corridor with a responsive air of foreign exploration, passed behind the door through whose keyhole she had so often peered. Ah! no wonder she had detected nothing abnormal. The room was a facsimile of her own—the same bed with the same quilt over it and the same crucifix above it, the same little table with the same books of devotion, the same washstand with the same tiny jug and basin, the same rusted, fireless grate. The wardrobe, like her own, was merely a pair of moth-eaten tartan curtains, concealing both pegs and garments from her curiosity. The only sense of difference came subtly from the folding windows, below whose railed balcony showed another view of the quarter, with steam-trams—diminished to toy trains—puffing past to the suburbs. But as Madame Dépine's eyes roved from these to the mantel-piece, she caught sight of an oval miniature of an elegant young woman, who was jewelled in many places, and corresponded exactly with her idea of a Princess!
To disguise her access of respect, she said abruptly, "It must be very noisy here from the steam-trams."
"It is what I love, the bustle of life," replied Madame Valière, simply.
"Ah!" said Madame Dépine, impressed beyond masking-point, "I suppose when one has had the habit of Courts—"
Madame Valière shuddered unexpectedly. "Let us not speak of it. Take a fig."
But Madame Dépine persisted—though she took the fig. "Ah! those were brave days when we had still an Emperor and an Empress to drive to the Bois with their equipages and outriders. Ah, how pretty it was!"
"But the President has also"—a fit of coughing interrupted Madame Valière—"has also outriders."
"But he is so bourgeois—a mere man of the people," said Madame Dépine.
"They are the most decent sort of folk. But do you not feel cold? I will light a fire." She bent towards the wood-box.