Il était une fois. Once upon a time! But the descent from luxury to poverty had neither saddened nor hardened Mère Casimir. Deeply attached to the students and to Mesdemoiselles Musette and Mimi, she professed a greater affection for them than ever she had borne M. le Marquis or Monseigneur le Duc.
“Des idiots,” she said of the latter.
“Des cœurs—real hearts,” was her favourite way of describing the kindly Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.
Many years have elapsed since first I saw Mère Casimir in the Café Procope—“le café de M. de Voltaire,” now, also, no more. It was one o’clock in the morning. The olive-man and the nougat-merchant had paid their last call; the flower-woman had said good-night; the next visitor was Mère Casimir. So feeble was she that she could scarcely push open the door: and when a waiter let her in, she curtsied to him, then curtsied to the customers. No one bought her matches: but she was given bock. Sous were collected on her behalf by a student; they were to persuade her to dance. But Mère Casimir had grown stiff with time. She could do no more than hop and curtsy, bob and bend, smile and crow, kiss and wave her withered old hand.
“Il était une fois,” she protested, at the end.
“Once upon a time.” Invited to seat herself at my table, Mère Casimir told me how she had shone at the Opera; how she had attended notorious, extravagant suppers and balls; how she had broken hearts; how Napoleon III. himself had noticed her; how she used to sing Béranger ditties.... She would sing one now ... one of her favourites.... “Listen.” Rising, she piped feebly again.
Ah, the Elysée! Mère Casimir compared it contemptuously to the Tuileries, and sighed. What was a President to an Emperor? What was the Opera to-day? and the Bois? and the Jockey Club? “The vulgar Republic has changed all that,” she complained. “It disgusts me—this Republic.”
Suddenly the old woman became silent. Bent in half behind the table, she was scarcely visible. Minutes went by, but she remained motionless. And at last the waiter, thinking her asleep, called out:
“Eh bien, la vieille?”