"And you have no difficulties with the laundress?"
"None," he groaned. "But in the bright days of poverty that have fled for ever, I have had many difficulties with her. This morning I reconstituted the situation—I imagined myself without a sou, and without a collar."
"The little restaurant," she questioned, "where I saw you dining on the odour?"
"I figured fondly to myself that I was ravenous and that I dared not enter. It was sublime."
"The mont-de-piété?"
"There imagination restored to me the vanished moments when I have mounted with suspense, and my least deplorable suit of clothes." His emotion was profound. "It is my youth to which I am bidding adieu!" he cried. "It is more than that—it is my aspirations and my renown!"
"But you have said that you have no renown," she reminded him.
"So much the more painful," said the young man; "the hussy we could not win is always the fairest—I part from renown even more despairingly than from youth."
She felt an amusement, an interest. But soon it was the turn of him to feel an interest—the interest that had consequences so important, so 'eart-breaking, so fatales! He had demanded of her, most naturally, her history, and this she related to him in a style dramatic. Myself, I have not the style dramatic, though I avow to you I admire that.
"We are in a provincial town," she said to the young man, "we are in Rouen—the workroom of a modiste. Have no embarrassment, monsieur Tricotrin, you, at least, are invisible to the girls who sew! They sew all day and talk little—already they are tristes, resigned. Among them sits one who is different—one passionate, ambitious—a girl who burns to be divette, singer, who is devoured by longings for applause, fashion, wealth. She has made the acquaintance of a little pastrycook. He has become fascinated, they are affianced. In a month she will be married."