These tops are crowded. Beside respectable business-men with clean-shaved cheeks and thick sausage-like moustaches are seated all sorts of Bohemians, half-students, half-artists, pale and thin, with melancholy eyes in faces weary with cheap pleasures, a strange and genuinely Parisian species of human being, always eager for any variety, be it a ball at Bulliers or the overthrow of a government, a restless, excitable, shallow, sparkling crowd, which might be called the oxygen of Paris in contrast with its hydrogen. And beside the huge city omnibus there toil, slowly, heavily-laden carts to which are harnessed long trains of huge white Norman steeds, with blue sheepskins upon their backs and bells around their necks, bells which have a rustic simple sound amid all the demoniac clatter of Paris, like the clear voices of children heard in some Bacchanalian revel. Tall, sturdy Normans in white, flapping broad-brimmed hats walk beside them, shaking their heads as they look down upon the wealthy degradation and the sordid misery of the filigree population of Paris.
The January sun shines above it all. There in the fresh cold air is an odour of oranges, fish, and flowers. Stella stops beside a flower-cart to buy a bunch of violets. Zino pauses to watch her. Amid the noise of the street he cannot understand what she says, but through the roar of the mid-day crowd, the loud pulsation of the great city stronger at this hour than at any other, he distinguishes brief detached notes of her gentle bird-like voice. How cordial the smile she has just bestowed upon the flower-girl!
"If she smiled at me like that I should give her the entire cart-full of flowers. I wonder if I might send her a bouquet to the 'Negroes?'"
Stella, with a charming shake of the head, has just taken out her purse, when a lumbering omnibus interposes between her and Zino's admiring gaze. The omnibus is followed by a cart, then by another, and another. At last the view is once more uninterrupted; but where is Stella? There she stands, pale, agitated, her eyes cast down, beside a tall, thin, consumptive-looking woman in shabby black, leading by the hand a little girl,--a woman with golden hair, and features in which, pinched and worn though they be by many a bitter experience, a striking likeness may be traced to Stella's beautiful profile.
"Where did she pick up that acquaintance?" the Prince asks himself; but before he can decide where and when he has seen that woman before, Stella and the stranger have vanished in a little confectioner's shop.
CHAPTER XXVI.
[FIVE-O'CLOCK TEA.]
However recklessly a woman may have trifled with her reputation in her youth, tossing it about as a thing of naught, there is sure to come a time in the progress of years when the first wrinkle appears, and instantly a careful search is made for the lost article. Then she needs a friend who shall smooth it out and polish it up and return it to her,--a friend who believes in its inherent spotlessness and will do her best to convince others of the same.
This office Stasy has undertaken to perform for the Princess Oblonsky. And what is to be her reward for her efforts? Delicious food, exquisite lodgings and service in apartments fairy-like in their appointments, numerous presents, and altogether very considerate treatment, with the exception of a few outbreaks of temper, unavoidable with such women as the Princess.
From all which it may be clearly perceived that the position of the Oblonsky is far from being as good as it was upon her husband's death, three years ago, or she would scarcely covet at so high a price the support of such a person as Anastasia.