But, cynic or no cynic, I was right. Elinor, in agreeing to meet Zizi at Vachettes on the morrow, had forgotten a previous engagement, which she remembered afterwards; so I went to the rendezvous alone, charged, however, with full powers to act as I might deem best. Zizi was a quarter-hour late, but she didn’t mind that, apparently; at any rate she vouchsafed no apology for having kept me waiting. She made haste to let me know that she couldn’t possibly change her lodgings; she hadn’t even looked for others: her mother wouldn’t hear of it, for one thing; and then—her friends? They all have mothers, somehow or other, though the notion seems incongruous: yet I suppose it’s only natural. Zizi’s was a purple-faced old sage femme from the purlieus of ‘Montmartre. She had taken counsel with her mother, she said, and her mother wouldn’t hear of her changing her abode. And then—her friends? When they came to see her, and found that she had moved, they would be displeased; they wouldn’t follow her up. Business is business, after all, but in our youth we were taught that friendship isn’t. Anyhow, Zizi foresaw herself quite friendless if she moved. “But my room is very well. If you and Madame want to support me, why not support me there?”
I echoed, rather feebly perhaps, Elinor’s lecture on the advantages of sunlight; and in any case, I told her, desirous as Madame and I were to “support her,” we positively declined to permit ourselves that indulgence, unless she took a sunny room: what we really wished was to help her to get well; we were persuaded that she couldn’t get well in a northern aspect; and we had no sort of eagerness to throw our money from the windows. It was pretty clear to me that she had begun to distrust our motives: such unaccustomed kindness, such reckless extravagance, bore on their face a suspicious look.
“Et cette dame?” she queried. “Cette anglaise? Qu est-ce qu’elle me veut? Elle est ta maîtresse, hein? Femme mariée, eh? Et toi, avec ton petit air Sainte-Nitouche, va! I’ll tell you what: give me some money, fifty francs, to buy medicines, to pay a doctor. Come on! Fifty francs—it isn’t much.”
“Yes, it is, my dear,” I retorted. “It’s a jolly lot, as you know very well. But still, if you prefer the part, when you might have the whole, that is your affair; and so I’m going to give it to you. Only, mind, this will begin and end the whole transaction. We give you fifty francs, but we will never give you another penny.” Then I smuggled a fifty-franc note into her pretty little hand,—smuggled it, so that the waiters and the other consommateurs shouldn’t see.