"For a man who has lived in the Chaussée d'Antin for three years, that is very surprising. Everybody about here knows Bastringuette, the flower girl who sells violets on Boulevard des Italiens."
"I seldom buy flowers; their odor makes me ill."
"Yes, I sell violets when there are any," said Bastringuette; "but when they're all gone, I sell other things—oranges, nuts, green peas, lettuce. There's always something to sell, at all seasons, and that's why they call us marchandes des quatre saisons."
"It seems to me that your lover doesn't keep you very handsomely," observed Célestin, with a mocking glance at the girl.
"My lover! dame! I don't know how he does it, but he never has a sou; and he's little better off for clothes than I am; luckily, love don't need a new coat to keep warm."
"Are you still with Sans-Cravate?" asked Albert, taking the largest bunch of violets on the girl's tray.
"To be sure. Oh! we poor girls aren't like the great ladies; we don't change our bill of fare every day."
"What! is that ne'er-do-well of a Sans-Cravate your lover?" said Célestin. "I don't congratulate you, my poor Bastringuette! The fellow often beats you, I suppose, doesn't he?"
"Beat me!" cried the girl, contracting her heavy eyebrows. "When a man beats me, it will be because I have no teeth left to eat his eyes out, and no nails to tear his nose. You think that a man beats his mistress, just because he's a messenger! Oh, yes! that's all very nice, but it ain't our style. We ain't brutes, just because we belong to the common people. It's much more likely to be you who amuse yourself striking women! The men who wear jackets ain't always the meanest curs. There are some vile hearts under fine coats."
Monsieur Célestin de Valnoir seemed far from pleased by this apostrophe; he bit his lip, and there was something very like a threat in the look he gave the girl; but she sustained it without the slightest evidence of emotion.