Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/325

“It is sometimes a good thing to be poor then,” said Vicomte Maurice, with a look of envious sadness.

“No, not at all,” said Musette. “If Marcel had been rich I should never have left him.”

“Go, then,” said the young fellow, shaking her by the hand. “You have put your new dress on,” he added, “it becomes you splendidly.”

“That is so,” said Musette; “it is a kind of presentiment I had this morning. Marcel will have the first fruits of it, Good-bye, I am off to taste a little of the bread of gaiety.”

Musette was that day wearing a charming toilette; never had the poem of her youth and beauty been set off by a more seductive binding. Besides, Musette had the instinctive genius of taste. On coming into the world, the first thing she had looked about for had been a looking-glass to settle herself in her swaddling clothes by, and before being christened she had already been guilty of the sin of coquetry. At the time when her position was of the humblest, when she was reduced to cotton print frocks, little white caps and kid shoes, she wore in charming style this poor and simple uniform of the grisettes, those pretty girls, half bees, half grasshoppers, who sang at their work all the week, only asked God for a little sunshine on Sunday, loved with all their heart, and sometimes threw themselves out of a window.

A breed that is now lost, thanks to the present generation of young fellows, a corrupted and at the same time corrupting race, but, above everything, vain, foolish and brutal. For the sake of uttering spiteful paradoxes, they chaffed these poor girls about their hands, disfigured by the sacred scars of toil, and as a consequence these soon no longer earned even enough to buy almond paste. By degrees they succeeded in inoculating them with their own foolishness and vanity, and then the grisette disappeared. It was