But Zizi was troubled by no such false shame. She smoothed the note out, and held it up to the light, scrutinising it rigorously. Having satisfied herself that it wasn’t a counterfeit, she crammed it into a small silver purse, closed the purse with a snap, and buried it in an occult female pocket. At last she turned her face towards mine, and said, “T’es bon, toi. That will bring you luck. Kiss me.” I suggested that the café was rather too public a place for kissing. The fifty-franc note radiated its genial warmth throughout her small frame, and she quite “chippered up,” and laughed and chatted with me very pleasantly. “Why do you never come to see me,—since we live in the same house?” she was good enough to ask. And she tried to pump me, in a naughty insinuating way, about Elinor, her benefactress.
But Zizi was launched upon her descent into Avernus. Her cough got worse and worse; her cheeks grew hollow, her whole face dragged-looking; her figure lost its elasticity. She took to rouge and powder, and introduced falsetto notes into her toilet. With her failing health, her friends began to fail her too: coughs and fevers and eyes unnaturally bright are disturbing elements, and put a strain on friendship. She had to seek for new ones, and was to be met with a good deal in the Boulevards. Whenever she spied Elinor and me on her horizon, she bore down upon us, and begged for money: and she was always spying us, always turning up; it seemed as if she must have dogged our footsteps. Thus you cast your bread upon the waters, and it comes back to you in the fulness of time. She was French, as I have remarked before: but she showed no discretion, and no respect for places or occasions. Not infrequently, therefore, her familiar hailings of us were embarrassing. By and by she acquired a light-hearted habit of entering the Vachette, ordering what she would, and leaving it to be scored to my account; and I had to remonstrate. At last she found out Elinor’s address, and called upon her. But Elinor was going to London the next day; so nothing came of that. This was in December; and early in the same month Zizi began to keep her room. She was probably very ill; she coughed perpetually. She coughed a good deal when it wasn’t necessary, and only racked without relieving her poor chest, to say nothing of her neighbours’ nerves. I used to urge her to control her cough, not to cough when she could help it; but self-control of any sort was beyond her tradition; and she would always cough at the slightest impulse. Once in a great while, if she was a little better, and the weather favoured, she would put on her rouge and her finery, and go out,—to “pécher à la ligne,” as she expressed it. Then, on her re-entrance, I would hear forlorn attempts at song and laughter, which would inevitably end in long, pitiful fits of coughing.