Part 15 (2/2)

She speedily became one of the foremost of the aristocracy of pleasure and slowly made her way towards that celebrity which consists in being mentioned in the columns devoted to Parisian gossip, or lithographed at the printsellers.

However Mademoiselle Musette was an exception to the women amongst whom she lived. Of a nature instinctively elegant and poetical, like all women who are really such, she loved luxury and the many enjoyments which it procures; her coquetry warmly coveted all that was handsome and distinguished; a daughter of the people, she would not have been in any way out of her element amidst the most regal sumptuosity. But Mademoiselle Musette, who was young and pretty, had never consented to be the mistress of any man who was not like herself young and handsome.

She had been known bravely to refuse the magnificient offers of an old man so rich that he was styled the Peru of the Chaussee d'Antin, and who had offered a golden ladder to the gratification of her fancies.

Intelligent and witty, she had also a repugnance for fools and simpletons, whatever might be their age, their t.i.tle and their name.

Musette, therefore, was an honest and pretty girl, who in love adopted half of Champfort's famous amphoris, ”Love is the interchange of two caprices.” Thus her connection had never been preceded by one of those shameful bargains which dishonor modern gallantry. As she herself said, Musette played fair and insisted that she should receive full change for her sincerity.

But if her fancies were lively and spontaneous, they were never durable enough to reach the height of a pa.s.sion. And the excessive mobility of her caprices, the little care she took to look at the purse and the boots of those who wished to be considered amongst them, brought about a corresponding mobility in her existence which was a perpetual alternation of blue broughams and omnibuses, first floors and fifth stories, silken gowns and cotton frocks. Oh cleaning girl! Living poem of youth with ringing laugh and joyous song! Tender heart beating for one and all beneath your half-open bodice! Ah Mademoiselle Musette, sister of Bernette and Mimi Pinson, it would need the pen of Alfred de Musset to fitly narrate your careless and vagabond course amidst the flowery paths of youth; and he would certainly have celebrated you, if like me, he had heard you sing in your pretty false notes, this couplet from one of your favorite ditties:

”It was a day in Spring When love I strove to sing Unto a nut brown maid.

O'er face as fair as dawn Cast a bewitching shade,”

The story we are about to tell is one of the most charming in the life of this charming adventuress who wore so many green gowns.

At a time when she was the mistress of a young Counsellor of State, who had gallantly placed in her hands the key of his ancestral coffers, Mademoiselle Musette was in the habit of receiving once a week in her pretty drawing room in the Rue de la Bruyere. These evenings resembled most Parisian evenings, with the difference that people amused themselves. When there was not enough room they sat on one another's knees, and it often happened that the same gla.s.s served for two.

Rodolphe, who was a friend of Musette and never anything more than a friend, without either of them knowing why--Rodolphe asked leave to bring his friend, the painter Marcel.

”A young fellow of talent,” he added, ”for whom the future is embroidering his Academician's coat.”

”Bring him,” said Musette.

The evening they were to go together to Musette's Rodolphe called on Marcel to fetch him. The artist was at his toilet.

”What!” said Rodolphe, ”you are going into society in a colored s.h.i.+rt?”

”Does that shock custom?” observed Marcel quietly.

”Shock custom, it stuns it.”

”The deuce,” said Marcel, looking at his s.h.i.+rt, which displayed a pattern of boars pursued by dogs, on a blue ground. ”I have not another here. Oh! Bah! So much the worse, I will put on a collar, and as 'Methuselah' b.u.t.tons to the neck no one will see the color of my lines.”

”What!” said Rodolphe uneasy, ”you are going to wear 'Methuselah'?”

”Alas!” replied Marcel, ”I must, G.o.d wills it and my tailor too; besides it has a new set of b.u.t.tons and I have just touched it up with ivory black.”

”Methuselah” was merely Marcel's dress coat. He called it so because it was the oldest garment of his wardrobe. ”Methuselah” was cut in the fas.h.i.+on of four years' before and was, besides of a hideous green, but Marcel declared that it looked black by candlelight.

In five minutes Marcel was dressed, he was attired in the most perfect bad taste, the get-up of an art student going into society.

M. Casimir Bonjour will never be so surprised the day he learns his election as a member of the Inst.i.tute as were Rodolphe and Marcel on reaching Mademoiselle Musette's.

This is the reason for their astonishment: Mademoiselle Musette who for some time past had fallen out with her lover the Counsellor of State, had been abandoned by him at a very critical juncture. Legal proceedings having been taken by her creditors and her landlord, her furniture had been seized and carried down into the courtyard in order to be taken away and sold on the following day. Despite this incident Mademoiselle Musette had not for a moment the idea of giving her guests the slip and did not put off her party. She had the courtyard arranged as a drawing room, spread a carpet on the pavement, prepared everything as usual, dressed to receive company, and invited all the tenants to her little entertainment, towards which Heaven contributed its illumination.

This jest had immense success, never had Musette's evenings displayed such go and gaiety; they were still dancing and singing when the porters came to take away furniture and carpets and the company was obliged to withdraw.

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