“Madame permits?” demanded Zizi, raising her eyebrows, astonished at such magnanimity on the part of a fellow-woman. Elinor smiled assent; and the two étudiantes rose and placed themselves before our own slab of marble. I asked them what they would take; of course they commanded each a menthe à l’eau. But though I tried to suit the conversation to their taste and level, they were not perfectly at ease. The presence of Elinor, whom, for all that she was alone with a man in the Café de la Paix, they could perceive with half an eye to be a bird of a totally different feather to their own, embarrassed them a good deal. Their desire to appear well before her, their determined best behaviour, tied their tongues, and made them surpassingly dull; for when they are not flavoured lavishly with Gallic salt, they are unimaginably insipid, these little soubrettes in the comedy of evil. However, before we broke up, I had engaged them to breakfast with us on the Sunday to follow. We were all to meet at Fousset’s in the Boulevard at noon, and thence we would proceed to the Abbaye de Thélème, where I would bespeak a cabinet particulier.
The Abbaye de Thélème is the riskiest of restaurants in a most risky quarter: but Elinor wanted to see the seamy side of Parisian life, and I was resolved to satisfy her once for all with a drastic measure of it.
“Voyez-vous,” I heard Zizi boasting to her, in a whisper, “it is forbidden for women to come alone to this café. But I am an honest girl. The gérant knows me. They make no objection to me or to my friends. Adieu, madame. Au revoir, proche,”—this last to me. Proche, indeed! But in the Latin Quarter the word is often used as a substitute for voisin. Then Zizi took her small self off, followed by Germaine.
“Well,” I queried, as soon as Elinor and I were alone, “is your thirst for experience satisfied? Are you happy at last?”
“I am overcome with bewilderment. Who would have known that they weren’t simply two ordinary bourgeoises? There wasn’t anything rowdy or shocking about them.”
“What! The rouge? The ribbons? The bulging eyes?”
“Oh, I wasn’t thinking of that one. I didn’t care much for her. Still, even she looked no worse than—well, a shop-girl. But the other, the little one. I shouldn’t have been surprised to meet her anywhere,—at Madame X———’s, at Madame de Z———-’.. She was dressed so quietly, in such good taste. Her manners were so subdued, almost English. And her face,—it’s a face that would strike you anywhere. So delicate, refined, so quaint and interesting. She doesn’t rouge. And such lovely hair! Oh, I am sure she is full of good qualities. What a shame and horror it is that... that... It makes one feel inclined to loathe your whole sex.”