“Au revoir, Joconde! Don Juan! Richelieu!”
Jéricourt returned to his room, saying to himself:
“Now I am sure of my revenge! Mademoiselle Violette will pay dear for the scratches she gave me!”
XVI
A DOWNFALL
Madame de Grangeville, whose place of abode Chicotin had not been able to ascertain, lived on Rue Fontaine-Saint-Georges, in a small apartment on the fourth floor of a recently-constructed house.
In houses which have just been finished, and of which the walls have not had time to dry and the paint to lose its odor, apartments are very commonly let to persons who offer to break them in, so to speak. Why are these persons very often lorettes or ballet-dancers out of employment? Probably because those ladies know that very little pains will be taken to seek information about them, and that they will be accepted as tenants with such effects as they choose to bring. Landlords are never exacting with those tenants who are willing to “dry the walls.”
The Baronne de Grangeville, however, did not belong to either of the various classes of women who are in the habit of hiring apartments without asking the price, and who reply to those persons who remark that their rent is high: “What difference does that make to me? I never pay!”
However, from her position, her tastes and her habits, it was impossible to mistake her position in life; it was easy to see that that lady had fallen from opulence.
Her furniture still retained some traces of her former opulence: it included a dressing-table and a couch of extreme daintiness, and side by side with them, easy-chairs and common chairs that were out of style, spotted and in wretched condition. There were ample curtains, large and small, in her bedroom; there were only very small ones in her salon. The dining-room was almost bare and there was very little furniture in the kitchen, but the baroness never, or very rarely, had cooking done in her apartment; she sent out to a restaurant for her meals; that way of living is more expensive, but Madame de Grangeville had never chosen to take the trouble to calculate, or to pay any heed to her expenses; so long as she had had a regular income, she had thought of nothing but satisfying her fancies, her most trifling desires, without stopping to think whether her means were sufficient for her innumerable whims; people who have no idea of order when they are young, rarely change when they are older; with them things go as best they can; they never think of the morrow. Such people are very agreeable in society and are generally considered very generous; they have nothing of their own and everyone exclaims:
“Ah! what an excellent heart!”