That dallies with the innocence of love
Like the old age.”
Let the reader judge if it be not a genuine violet.
Of the many strange functions of the Parisian police in the days of the well-beloved Louis XV.—and altogether most worthless of his name—one of the strangest appears to have been that of furnishing for the amusement of the royal circle regular reports, or rather novelettes, of all episodes, striking or romantic, that came under their notice. The French have always had a taste for the dramatic aspect of the law, and to this day a procès-verbal reads often like a feuilleton of Ponson du Terrail. It may be supposed that, in the narratives which thus tickled the languid leisure of Louis, a rigid adherence to truth was not deemed essential where a slight embellishment enhanced the interest. But all had probably a basis in fact, which one is fain to hope was more than usually broad in so innocent and touching a history as that of Nanette Lollier, the Flower-Girl of the Palais Royal.
In the year 1740 there dwelt in the parish of St. Leu, at Paris, an honest, hard-working couple named André Lollier and Marie Jeanne Ladure, his wife; the former of whom held a subordinate position in the Bureau of Markets, while the latter attended to their fish-stand. Between them they earned ample to keep the pot boiling comfortably, had it not been for the prodigious number of small mouths that daily watered around that savory and capacious vessel; and when there came a sixteenth, it is to be feared that honest André received it rather ruefully and altogether as a discord in the harmony of existence—a blessing very much in disguise. So despite the new-comer’s beauty and precocity and countless pretty baby ways, her aggrieved parents were only too glad to accept her godmother’s offer to take her off their hands and to bring her up. By that good lady—who seems to have been really a most kind-hearted person, although she was a beadle’s widow—the little Nanette (so the child had been named) was carefully instructed in such branches of learning as a young person of her station was at that time expected to know, and which, in truth, were not very many. There is little doubt that one young lady of Vassar would have put the entire faculty of St. Cyr to rout.
But Nanette was soon found to possess a fine voice, and pains were taken to cultivate it—so successfully that when, at the mature age of twelve, the youthful chorister made her début in a Christmas anthem at the parish church, everybody was delighted. And when during the following Holy Week she sang a Stabat better than many persons four times her age, everybody said at once she was a prodigy.
Now, we all know what comes to prodigies. The praises, pettings, and presents this prodigy received turned her small and not very wise head. Good Mère Lollier wished to make a fish-mongress of her; mademoiselle spurned the proposal. What! she, a genius, a beauty, a divine voice, waste her life on horrid, ill-smelling fish? (She made no objection, you will observe, to dining on them when her mother cooked them for her, but that was quite a different matter.) She soil her pretty fingers with scales, haggle over herrings, or dicker about dace? Perish the thought! Her mother did it, to be sure, but then—her mother was not a genius. (Do young ladies nowadays ever reason thus?) No; she would be a flower-girl and sing her nosegays into every buttonhole—or wherever else they then wore their nosegays—in Paris. The manners of the fish-market even then lacked something of the repose of Vere de Vere, and Mère Lollier’s only answer to this astounding proposal was a slap and—we regret to say—a kick. She was not aware that genius is not to be kicked with impunity. She soon discovered it to her sorrow; for in her way she loved Nanette, and kicked her, we may be sure, only in kindness.
Shortly after this affront Nanette disappeared, and from that moment all trace of her was lost. Word came to her parents from time to time that she was well, but of her whereabouts their most persistent efforts could gain no tidings. Her absence lasted three years; how or where passed no one—we sniff the touch of the embellisher here—could ever discover, nor would she herself divulge. At last one fine morning comes a message to Mère Lollier that her daughter is at the convent of the Carmelites, and will be handed over to them in person, or to any priest who comes with an order from them.
Beside herself with joy, Mère Lollier, with just a hasty touch to her cap—even a Dame de la Halle is, outside of business, a woman—rushes off to M. le Curé with the great news. In those days M. le Curé was the first applied to in every emergency of joy or grief: perhaps it would have been better for Paris if the custom had not been survived by others less wholesome. The good priest lent a sympathetic ear; for the piety and industry of the Lolliers had made them prime favorites with him, and he had, besides, taken a lively interest in the fate of his little chorister. A fiacre is called at once, and the curé and Mère Lollier, with her eldest son, a strapping sergeant in the French guards—not then such pigmies as absinthe has left them now—fly to the convent at such a pace as only the promise of a fabulous pourboire can extract from a Parisian cab-horse. The lady-superior greets them in the convent parlor and presently ushers in a lovely young girl—what! a girl?—a princess, to whom Mère Lollier with difficulty represses an inclination to courtesy, while M. le Curé wipes his spectacles and the gaping sergeant at once comes to a salute. But the princess speedily puts an end to their doubts by embracing them all in turn with the liveliest emotion. It is indeed Nanette, but Nanette developed into such beauty and grace and sprightliness as many a princess might envy. Nor is her moral nature less improved. She is now as modest and docile as before she was vain and headstrong; only—she will still be a flower-girl. And yet women are sometimes called weak!
Before the young lady’s appearance in the parlor the superior had explained to her wondering auditors how a strange lady the evening before had brought Nanette to the convent—“Hum!” says M. le Curé dubiously, taking snuff—and on leaving her had left at the same time 20,000 francs for her dowry, if she wished to become a religious—“Ha!” says M. le Curé thoughtfully, brushing away the snuff that has fallen on his band. Then he beams upon Nanette, rubbing his hands encouragingly, while Mère Lollier nods acquiescence and the sergeant shifts to the other leg and gapes. But Nanette, in spite of these diverse blandishments, respectfully but firmly declined to be a religious. Her vocation was to be a flower-girl, and a flower-girl she would be.