Elinor’s commentary at this point became a lamentation, which it would be irrelevant to repeat. “I must get her to tell me her story,” was its conclusion.
“Oh, she’ll tell you her story fast enough, only, I warn you, it will be a pack of lies. The truth isn’t in them, those little puppets. Don’t cherish any illusions about her. The most one can say for her is that she’s a fairly harmless example of a desperately bad class. The grisette of Musset, of Henry Murger, exists no longer, even if she ever did exist. To-day Zizi was on her good behaviour. Sunday, I hope for the sake of science, she’ll get off it, and be her wicked little self. Yes, her face is remarkable, but it’s an absurd accident, a slip of nature: not one of the qualities it would seem to indicate is anywhere in her—neither wit nor humour nor emotion. She’s just a little undersized cat; not a kitten: she has none of the innocent gentleness of a kitten: an undergrown, hard, sprightly little cat. However, she can be amusing enough when she’s roused; and on Sunday we are likely to have a merry breakfast.” But herein I proved myself a false prophet. We were still at the hors d’ouvres when Zizi began to cry. She had coughed; and Elinor had asked her if she had a cold; and that question precipitated a flood of tears. This was dispiriting. It is always dispiriting to see one of these creatures anything but gay and flippant: serious feeling is so crudely, so garishly, at variance with your preconception of them, with the mood in which you approach them. And yet they cry a good deal,—mostly, however, tears of mere spite or vexed vanity; or, it may be, of hysteria, for they are frightfully subject to what they call crises de nerfs. But Zizi’s tears now were of a different water. Had she a cold? Oh, no, it was worse than that. The doctor said her lungs were affected; and if she didn’t speedily change her mode of life, she must go into a decline. And this, if you please, was the dish laid on our table, there in the vulgar cabinet particulier of that shady restaurant, under the crystal gasalier, and between the four diamond-scratched looking-glasses that covered the walls,—this was the dish served to us even before the oysters; and you may imagine, therefore, with what appetite we attacked the good things that came after. The doctor had told her that she must absolutely suspend her dissipations for at least a six-month, and rest, and soigner herself, and “feed up,” or she would surely become poitrinaire. “And do nothing? How can I? Faut vivre, parbleu!” Her present friend-in-chief, she explained, was at the School of Mines; his pension from his family only amounted to two hundred and fifty francs a month; he was all that is good, he would do his utmost for her; but she couldn’t live on what he could spare her out of two hundred and fifty francs a month.