Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/291

to notice the smoke when she made her round. Ah! good sister, how kind you were, and how beautiful you looked, too, when you came to sprinkle us with holy water. We could see you approaching, walking slowly along the gloomy aisles, draped in your white veil, which fell in such graceful folds, and which our friend Jacques admired so much. Ah! kind sister, you were the Beatrice of that Inferno. So sweet were your consolations that we were always complaining in order to be consoled by you. If my friend Jacques had not died one snowy day he would have carved you a nice little Virgin Mary to put in your cell, good Sister Sainte Geneviève.

A Reader: Well, and the muff? I do not see anything of the muff.

Another Reader: And Mademoiselle Francine, whereabouts is she, then?

First Reader: This story is not very lively.

Second Reader: We shall see further on.

I really beg your pardon, gentlemen, it is my friend Jacques’s pipe that has led me away into these digressions. But, besides, I am not pledged to make you laugh. Times are not always gay in Bohemia.

Jacques and Francine had met in a house in the Rue de la Tour-d’Auvergne, into which they had both moved at the same time at the April quarter.

The artist and the young girl were a week without entering on those neighborly relations which are almost always forced on one when dwelling on the same floor. However, without having exchanged a word, they were already acquainted with one another. Francine knew that her neighbor was a poor devil of an artist, and Jacques had learned that his was a little seamstress who had quitted her family to escape the ill-usage of a stepmother. She accomplished miracles of economy to make both ends meet,