A SALON IN PARIS BEFORE THE WAR.
PART I.
VANITY OF VANITIES.
Mesdames Folibel occupied a double set of rooms au premier on the Boulevard des Italiens. On a door to the right a large brass plate announced that Madame Augustine Folibel presided over “lingerie et dentelles,” and invited the public to “tourner le bouton.” To the left a large steel plate proclaimed Madame Alexandrine Folibel “modiste,” and invited the public to ring the bell. But after a certain hour every day both these invitations were negatived by a page in buttons, who, stationed at either door, kept the way open for the ceaseless flow of visitors passing in and out of the two establishments. My friend Berthe de Bonton was just turning in to the lingerie department when I came up the stairs.
“How lucky!” she cried, running across the landing to me, then sotto voce: “Madame Clifford [pronounced Cliefore] is here, and wants me to choose a bonnet for her. Now, if there’s a thing I hate, it is choosing a bonnet for an Englishwoman. To begin with, they don’t possess the first rudiments of culture in dress, then they can never make up their minds, and they find everything too dear; but the crowning absurdity is that they bring their husbands with them, and consult them! Figurez-vous, ma chère!” And Berthe, with a Frenchwoman’s keen sense of the comic, laughed merrily at the ludicrous conceit. I laughed with her, though not quite from the same point of view.
“I made an excuse to get away for a few minutes, and left the ménage discussing a pink tulle with marabout and beetle-wings trimming—un petit poème, chérie—but,” she caught me by the arm, “fancy Madame Clifford’s complexion under it!”
“Ah, bonjour, mesdames! I am at the order of ces dames. Will they take the pains to seat themselves just for one second?” continued Madame Augustine, who greeted us in the first salon, where she was carrying on a warm debate on the relative merits of Alençon versus Valenciennes as a trimming for a bridal peignoir.
“I merely wanted to say a word with reference to my order of yesterday. Where is Mademoiselle Florine?” inquired Berthe, looking round the room, where there were several groups ordering pretty things.
“Florine! Florine!” called out Madame Augustine.
“Voici, madame!”
Mademoiselle Florine was a plump little boulette of a woman, who wore her nose retroussé and always looked at you as if she had reason to complain of you. Without being uncivil, she looked it; her nose had a supercilious expression that made you feel it was considering you de haut en bas. The fact is, Mademoiselle Florine was not happy. She was disappointed, not in love, but with life in general, and with lingerie in particular. She had adopted lingerie as a vocation, and now it was going down in the world; it was degenerating into pacotille; grandes dames began to grow cold about it, and to wear collars and cuffs that a petite bourgeoise would have turned up her nose at ten years ago. More grievous still was the change that had come over petticoats. The deterioration in this line she took terribly to heart, and the surest way to enlist her good graces and secure her interest in your order, be it ever so small, was to preface it with a sigh or a sneer at red Balmorals or other gaudy and economical inventions which had dethroned the snowy jupon blanc of her youth, with its tucks and frills and dainty edgings of lace or embroidery. Berthe, it so happened, very strongly shared this dislike to colored petticoats, and was guilty of considerable extravagance in the choice of white ones; Mademoiselle Florine’s sympathies consequently went out to her, and, no matter how busily she was engaged or with whom, she would fly to Berthe as to a kindred soul the moment she appeared.