MADEMOISELLE MUSETTE
Mademoiselle Musette was a pretty girl of twenty who shortly after her
arrival in Paris had become what many pretty girls become when they
have a neat figure, plenty of coquesttishness, a dash of ambition and
hardly any education. After having for a long time shone as the star of
the supper parties of the Latin Quarter, at which she used to sing in a
voice, still very fresh if not very true, a number of country ditties,
which earned her the nickname under which she has since been
immortalized by one of our neatest rhymsters, Mademoiselle Musette
suddenly left the Rue de la Harpe to go and dwell upon the Cytherean
heights of the Breda district.
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 title 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 passion. 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 glass 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 shirt?"
"Does that shock custom?" observed Marcel quietly.
"Shock custom, it stuns it."
"The deuce," said Marcel, looking at his shirt, 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' buttons 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, God wills it and my tailor too; besides
it has a new set of buttons 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
fashion 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 Institute 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.
Musette bowed her guests out, singing:
"They will laugh long and loud, tralala,
At my Thursday night's crowd
They will laugh long and loud, tralala."
Marcel and Rodolphe alone remained with Musette, who ascended to her
room where there was nothing left but the bed.
"Ah, but my adventure is no longer such a lively one after all," said
Musette. "I shall have to take up my quarters out of doors."
"Oh madame!" said Marcel, "if I had the gifts of Plutus I should like to
offer you a temple finer than that of Solomon, but--"
"You are not Plutus. All the same I thank you for your good intentions.
Ah!" she added, glancing around the room, "I was getting bored here, and
then the furniture was old. I had had it nearly six months. But that is
not all, after the dance one should sup."
"Let us sup-pose," said Marcel, who had an itch of punning, above all
in the morning, when he was terrible.
As Rodolphe had gained some money at the lansquenet played during the
evening, he carried off Musette and Marcel to a restaurant which was
just opening.
After breakfast, the three, who had no inclination for sleep, spoke of
finishing the day in the country, and as they found themselves close to
the railway station they got into the first train that started, which
landed them at Saint Germain.
During the whole of the night of the party and all of the rest of the
day Marcel, who was gunpowder which a single glance sufficed to kindle,
had been violently smitten by Mademoiselle Musette and paid her
"highly-colored court," as he put it to Rodolphe. He even went so far as
to propose to the pretty girl to buy her furniture handsomer than the
last with the result of the sale of his famous picture, "The Passage of
the Red Sea." Hence the artist saw with pain the moment arrive when it
became necessary to part from Musette, who whilst allowing him to kiss
her hands, neck and sundry other accessories, gently repulsed him every
time that he tried to violently burgle her heart.
On reaching Paris, Rodolphe left his friend with the girl, who asked the
artist to see her to her door.
"Will you allow me to call on you?" asked Marcel, "I will paint your
portrait."
"My dear fellow," replied she, "I cannot give you my address, since
tomorrow I may no longer have one, but I will call and see you, and I
will mend your coat, which has a hole so big that one could shoot the
moon through it."
"I will await your coming like that of the messiah," said Marcel.
"Not quite so long," said Musette, laughing.
"What a charming girl," said Marcel to himself, as he slowly walked
away. "She is the Goddess of Mirth. I will make two holes in my coat."
He had not gone twenty paces before he felt himself tapped on the
shoulder. It was Mademoiselle Musette.
"My dear Monsieur Marcel," said she, "are you a true knight?"
"I am. 'Rubens and my lady,' that is my motto."
"Well then, hearken to my woes and pity take, most noble sir," returned
Musette, who was slightly tinged with literature, although she murdered
grammar in fine style, "the landlord has taken away the key of my room
and it is eleven o'clock at night. Do you understand?"
"I understand," said Marcel, offering Musette his arm. He took her to
his studio on the Quai aux Fleurs.
Musette was hardly able to keep awake, but she still had strength
enough to say to Marcel, taking him by the hand, "You remember what you
have promised?"
"Oh Musette! charming creature!" said the artist in a somewhat moved
tone, "you are here beneath a hospitable roof, sleep in peace. Good
night, I am off."
"Why so?" said Musette, her eyes half closed. "I am not afraid, I can
assure you. In the first place, there are two rooms. I will sleep on
your sofa."
"My sofa is too hard to sleep on, it is stuffed with carded pebbles. I
will give you hospitality here, and ask it for myself from a friend who
lives on the same landing. It will be more prudent," said he. "I usually
keep my word, but I am twenty-two and you are eighteen, Musette,--and I
am off. Good night."
The next morning at eight o'clock Marcel entered her room with a pot of
flowers that he had gone and bought in the market. He found Musette, who
had thrown herself fully dressed on the bed, and was still sleeping. At
the noise made by him she woke, and held out her hand.
"What a good fellow," said she.
"Good fellow," repeated Marcel, "is not that a term of ridicule?"
"Oh!" exclaimed Musette, "why should you say that to me? It is not nice.
Instead of saying spiteful things offer me that pretty pot of flowers."
"It is, indeed, for you that I have brought them up," said Marcel. "Take
it, and in return for my hospitality sing me one of your songs, the echo
of my garret may perhaps retain something of your voice, and I shall
still hear you after you have departed."
"Oh! so you want to show me the door?" said Musette. "Listen, Marcel, I
do not beat about the bush to say what my thoughts are. You like me and
I like you. It is not love, but it is perhaps its seed. Well, I am not
going away, I am going to stop here, and I shall stay here as long as
the flowers you have just given me remain unfaded."
"Ah!" exclaimed Marcel, "they will fade in a couple of days. If I had
known I would have bought immortelles."
* * * * *
For a fortnight Musette and Marcel lived together, and led, although
often without money, the most charming life in the world. Musette felt
for the artist an affection which had nothing in common with her
preceding passions, and Marcel began to fear that he was seriously in
love with his mistress. Ignorant that she herself was very much afraid
of being equally smitten, he glanced every morning at the condition of
the flowers, the death of which was to bring about the severance of
their connection, and found it very difficult to account for their
continued freshness. But he soon had a key to the mystery. One night,
waking up, he no longer found Musette beside him. He rose, hastened into
the next room, and perceived his mistress, who profited nightly by his
slumbers to water the flowers and hinder them from perishing.