At intervals rough-looking men slouched in and out. Whispering went on in corners. But no one heeded Bibi and Mère Casimir, and they themselves paid no attention to the dubious drinkers in the place.
“He is gay, isn’t he, my Bibi?” the old woman would inquire.
“She is still young, isn’t she, la Mère Casimir?” the old fellow demanded.
Then Mère Casimir laughed in her feeble, cracked voice, and rubbed her withered old hands, and nodded her bowed white head, and piped the first line of the sad refrain:
“Il était une fois.”
[1] Paris of the Parisians.
2. Gloom on the Rive Gauche
Sometimes in the Latin Quarter come grave moments, grim and gloomy moments—moments when the students shun the cafés; when their lady friends, Mesdemoiselles Mimi and Musette—Mürger’s daughters, Daughters of Bohemia—look pale and anxious, and whisper together as though alarmed; when the spectator, observing this depression, becomes himself depressed. At such a time the women whose clothes are shabby, whose faces are tragical (the faded Mimis, the Musettes of years ago) come out of those corners to which their unattractiveness has condemned them; come out, and congregate—skeletons some of them, swollen, shapeless creatures the rest—all, considering their usual comparative obscurity, ominous. When the temper of the Quarter is blithe, they must look on forlornly from the background. No one heeds them; no one invites them to accept an olive or sip a bock. But when the Quarter has been horrified by some tragedy, some crime, they, on account of their memories and experiences, on account, too, of their own connection with tragedy—they, then, are sought after; they, then, talk the most; they, then, hold the longest and completest version of the matter that has brought on the gloom.
Recently, at three o’clock in the morning, I heard these shabby, solitary women chattering more ominously than usual in Madame Bertrand’s hospitable milk-shop. There, after the cafés have been closed, the students assemble to devour sandwiches, brioches, hot rolls; but upon the occasion in question the only customers present were Mürger’s elderly, unattractive daughters. And whilst sipping hot milk or coffee, and biting hungrily into a penny roll, they listened to the tale of a woman—the palest, the most wasted of this forlorn group of women, whose coat and skirt were red, whose boots were muddy, whose gloves betrayed stitching done upstairs in her dim back room.
Occasionally her narrative was interrupted by a short, sharp cough. She lost her breath; pressed her hand to her breast; cleared her throat.