Some time after our sojourn in Bloomsbury "diggin's" we found ourselves in a Continental pension, the very reverse of this in every respect. It was a Parisian pension bourgeoise, but one entirely away from every haunt of foreigners as well as from foreign influences,—a pension as French as French could be, where we were not merely the only foreigners present, but the only ones who had ever penetrated there.
It was a large white house, standing in its own grounds, not far from the Bois de Vincennes, pre-eminently a pension bourgeoise, and without pretensions higher than the widows of shopkeepers and the relicts of small government employees that formed its support. Not counting ourselves, there were twenty Relicts and one Maiden, all with handsome incomes and diamonds, but with the habit of running far and wide upon the open boulevard in caps, loose sacques, and list slippers, and of boasting of the cheap bargains they made in stockings and gowns. Their toilets were always tout ce qu'il y a de plus bourgeois, their conversation ran upon public scandals, private gossip, and fluctuations of trade (almost all of them had kept shop with their departed consorts), their reading was Paul de Kock's novels and the feuilletons of "Le Petit Journal." The youngest widow was fifty, the Maiden ninety-and-nine. The latter was daughter of a man who had been concierge of the Tuileries during the reign of Charles X. She was dusky and shrivelled as any daughter of the Pharaohs, but her faculties were marvellously preserved and her memory rich with interesting personal gossip of a former period. We Americans should have delighted to draw upon that memory, but one thing hindered us: that was the insatiable, indomitable, unparalleled coquetry of our ancient Maiden. She would never talk with any woman when any man was in the room. She descended to the stuffy little salon only in the evening, when the Relicts were gathered to their gambling for sous and the atmosphere was an imitation of the Black Hole of Calcutta. She descended en grande tenue, the grandest ever seen there, frizzled, jewelled, and muffled to the throat in fleecy clouds of white wool. She came all quirks and quivers, all flutters and smiles, for there she met our only Monsieur,—Monsieur Boulanger, our landlord. She invariably took her seat beside him, and devoted quirks and quivers exclusively to him, tapping him with her fan, calling him "Méchant! méchant!" "farceur," or "quel diable d'homme!" twittering and carolling in her old broken voice, like a senile canary dreaming of its far-off youth. M. Boulanger was of peasant origin and appearance, gray-bearded and gray-haired, and clumping always in sabots over the stone floors, except in the salon in the evening. But her eyes were only for him; and the only occasion on which any of her own uninteresting sex had her attention was when Madame Boulanger pouted and pretended to be jealous, or some Relict showed pique that our only Monsieur was monopolized by our only Maiden. Then she smiled archly, cooed sweetly, and arched her ancient neck with visible triumph.
Before we left the pension bourgeoise our front door was hung with heavy black curtains, and our Maiden passed forth into the broad day for the first time in ten years. She went out unsmiling, uncooing, without flutter or quirk, and no date upon her pine coffin, for with her last breath she had forbidden it.
"Nobody need know that I have lived more than fifty years," she murmured; "and don't let Monsieur Boulanger look at me when I am dead."
One of our widows—Madame Notte—was almost stone-deaf. She was a dwarfish creature, passionately fond of cards, waxing into terrible tempers over them, and with only one interest in life,—worshipful love of her only son, a not too beautiful citoyen of fifty. This son fell ill and died. Poor Madame Notte knew of his illness, but not of its danger and final end. It was thought best to keep from her the knowledge that she was childless, lest the shock should be too great for her frail strength. She was told he had gone to Italy for his health; and when his widow and daughters came twice each week to visit her, they left their weeds at home, came in a close carriage in their gayest attire, and laughed and talked to her blithely with heavy hearts. All about the poor old mother we talked openly and freely of her loss and our pity, and she sat as unwitting as stone of it all. But when we put our mouths to her ear and asked for her son, a beautiful change always dawned upon the leaden countenance. "He has gone away," she invariably smiled,—"gone to a better country, where it is always summer. When I see him again he will be well, quite well." She, too, passed under the heavy black curtains that winter; and from our hearts we prayed that all was well with them in that better country where it is always summer.
One of our Relicts prided herself upon her English, and criticised ours. "They speak English fairly well: I can understand them," I once heard her say of us to a group of Relicts in the garden; "but of course they speak only a patois: they are Americans."
"Why say you always to your infant, 'Hurry, my darling'?" she asked one day. "The pure Englishes says always, ''Urry, me darlink.'" Madame had acquired her English from her defunct lord, a commercial traveller from Lancashire.
One day, glancing at an envelope I had just addressed, she remarked, "Eh bien! you Americans are very like English, after all. In England the last name of almost every monsieur is 'Esq.'!"
Another day she sweetly remarked, "This knife has very bad bladders."
As knives in our country are not generally endowed with that physical possession, I could only stare my astonishment.