Let us then make Violette’s acquaintance; it is always pleasant to know a pretty girl, even though she sells bouquets, but especially when she sells nothing else.
Violette was from eighteen to nineteen years of age; her figure was slender and shapely; she was tall enough but not too tall, which, in women, is rather a defect than an advantage; but there was grace in all her movements, and refinement in her simplicity.
Her face was oval; her fine brown hair left bare a forehead which was instinct with innocence and pride. Her eyes too were brown, but their expression was immeasurably sweet and they were fringed by long lashes which imparted to them an infinite charm; the eyebrows were but slightly marked. Her mouth was not very small, but it was intelligent; small mouths, which are unintelligent, of which there are so many, are not nearly so desirable. Lastly, her teeth were white and very regular. As you see, all these things must have combined to make a very pretty girl. Still there are many who possess all Violette’s advantages, but whom we pass without being charmed by them; the reason is, that it is not always sufficient to be beautiful in order to attract; a woman must also have in herself that indefinable something which fascinates, which surprises, which allures, which gives expression to the face and charm to the voice. That something is a gift of nature, which coquetry tries in vain to supply, and the flower girl had that gift. Moreover, there was in her speech and in her manners something which distinguished her from her companions. She expressed herself in better language and she was always courteous, even when one did not buy of her. So that Violette was noticed first for her beauty and then for her courtesy. Courtesy is a thing so rare among street peddlers, and even elsewhere! There are so many people who think that they acquire the air of being somebody by affecting an insolent tone and a contemptuous glance! Poor fools! If they did not arouse laughter, they would arouse compassion.
But was this flower girl, who expressed herself in better language than others of her trade, the child of rich people stricken by misfortune? Was it to support destitute and infirm parents that that pretty girl had decided to take up a business for which she was not born?
Not at all. Violette did not know her parents, she did not know whether they still lived, but what she did know perfectly was that they had abandoned her.
Put out to nurse in a small village of Picardie, near Abbeville, she evidently possessed little interest for them, for they had forgotten to pay the woman who had undertaken to replace her mother. The nurse was patient for a long while, but after three years, hearing nothing from her nursling’s parents, and being too poor to add a little stranger to her numerous family, the woman was about to leave the child at the Foundling Hospital, when an old lady who was passing through the village, touched with compassion for the deserted little one, offered the nurse to take charge of her and to take her to Paris with her.
The nurse assented, and took the lady’s address, in order that she might write to her if the child’s parents should ever claim her.
But who were her parents?
To the lady’s question the peasant woman replied:
“Faith, I hardly know, or rather I don’t know, at all. As to the mother, I am very sure I never saw her. I was at the nurses’ bureau on Rue Sainte-Apolline; a fine gentleman—I guess he was a servant—came into the place, while I was taking the air in the yard; I was the first one he saw, and he asked me if I wanted to take a brat that was born the night before. I says yes; then he says: ‘I don’t need to look any further; you’ll do as well as another; take your bundle and come.’—I went with him; there was a carriage at the door, and I got in with the swell servant. We drove to a street I don’t know the name of, he took me into a house, with a concierge, and up to the second floor, into a handsome room. I found a gentleman there, very well dressed, a pretty man with a fine figure; he had a splendid gold chain sticking out of his fob. He was a young man, about thirty-two or thirty-three, more or less. And when he saw the man come in who had brought me there, he says: