“Une sainte fille, une sainte fille,” reiterated M. le Curé, himself sobbing by the bedside.
And to-day the black-edged visiting-card—“Pension de Famille. French and Piano Lessons. Moderate Terms”—appears no longer on the door. With her last remaining French rentes passed the elder Mademoiselle Périvier. Gone, without a complaint, are the frail, frugal old spinsters. And M. Henri Rochette, on the eve of his release from prison, is growing a new beard.
4. The Affair of the Collars
It is a popular superstition that amongst the smaller French bourgeoisie one day is like another day, and all days are empty, colourless and banal. None of the joys of life—none of its shocks and surprises—up there in the Durands’ gloomy and oppressive fifth-floor appartement. From morning till night, infinite monotony, relieved only by Madame Durand’s periodical altercations with the concierge, the tradespeople, and deaf and dim-eyed old Amélie, the cook. The family newspaper is the Petit Journal, because of its two feuilletons. In a corner a little, damaged piano, upon which angular and elderly Mademoiselle Durand laboriously picks out the Polka des Joyeux and the Valse Bleue. In another corner Madame Durand knits away at a pink woollen shawl. And from a third corner M. Hippolyte Durand, in huge carpet slippers, tells his wife what has happened to him during the day.
The omnibus that took him to his office was full; his lunch consisted of navarin aux pommes and stewed pears; after leaving his bureau he played two games of dominoes with Dupont in the Café du Commerce, and the omnibus that brought him home was even fuller than that in which he travelled to business.
“There should be more omnibuses in Paris,” remarks Madame Durand.
“And how odious are the conductors!” exclaims elderly and embittered Mademoiselle Durand from the piano.
Then lights out at eleven o’clock, and the dull, dreamless sleep of the unimaginative, the worthy.
However, this popularly conceived idea of the life and mind of the smaller French bourgeoisie is something of a libel. Their existence is not eternally uneventful, nor their temperament hopelessly colourless. Now and again the dim, oppressive fifth-floor appartements are shaken by “Affairs” quite as exciting and incoherent in their own way as those that have convulsed the Palace of Justice and Chamber of Deputies. There was once a Dreyfus Affair. There were also the Syveton and Steinheil Affairs. All three caused the Parisians (who dearly love imbroglios and incoherencies) to exclaim: “C’est le comble!”—in colloquial English: “It’s the limit!”