Pursing up her lips, she was about to answer; but I, casting a contemptuous glance at her hat, her costume, and her entire person, said, in a curt and disdainful voice:
"I regret it, but Madame's place does not please me. I do not go into houses like Madame's."
And I sailed out triumphantly.
One day a little woman, with hair outrageously dyed, with lips painted with minium, with enameled cheeks, as insolent as a guinea-hen, and perfumed like a bidet, after asking me thirty-six questions, put a thirty-seventh:
"Are you well behaved? Do you receive lovers?"
"And Madame?" I answered very quietly, showing no astonishment.
Some, less difficult to please, or more weary or more timid, accepted infected places. They were hooted.
"Bon voyage! We shall see you soon again."
At the sight of us thus piled up on our benches, with legs spread apart, dreamy, stupid, or chattering, and listening to the successive calls of the madame: "Mademoiselle Victoire!... Mademoiselle Irène!... Mademoiselle Zulma!" it sometimes seemed to me as if we were in a public house, awaiting the next caller. That seemed to me funny or sad, I don't know which; and one day I remarked upon it aloud. There was a general outburst of laughter. Each one immediately delivered herself of all the exact and marvelous information of which she was in possession concerning establishments of that character. A fat and puffy creature, who was peeling an orange, said:
"Surely that would be better. They are sure of a living in those places. And champagne, you know, young women; and chemises with silver stars; and no corsets!"