Mimi In Fine Feather
"No, no, no, you are no longer Lisette! No, no, no, you are no longer
Mimi. You are today, my lady the viscomtess, the day after tomorrow you
may, perhaps, be your grace the duchess; the doorway of your dreams has
at length been thrown wide open before you, and you have passed through
it victorious and triumphant. I felt certain you would end up by doing
so, some night or other. It was bound to be; besides, your white hands
were made for idleness, and for a long time past have called for the
ring of some aristocratic alliance. At length you have a coat of arms.
But, we still prefer the one which youth gave to your beauty, when your
blue eyes and your pale face seemed to quarter azure on a lily field.
Noble or serf, you are ever charming, and I readily recognized you when
you passed by in the street the other evening, with rapid and well-shod
foot, aiding the wind with your gloved hand in lifting the skirts of
your new dress, partly in order not to let it be soiled, but a great
deal more in order to show your embroidered petticoats and open-worked
stockings. You had on a wonderful bonnet, and even seemed plunged in
deep perplexity on the subject of the veil of costly lace which floated
over this bonnet. A very serious trouble indeed, for it was a question
of deciding which was best and most advantageous to your coquetry, to
wear this veil up or down. By wearing it down, you risked not being
recognized by those of your friends whom you might meet, and who
certainly would have passed by you ten times without suspecting that
this costly envelope hid Mademoiselle Mimi. On the other hand, by
wearing this veil up, it was it that risked escaping notice, and in that
case, what was the good of having it? You had cleverly solved the
difficulty by alternately raising and lowering at every tenth step; this
wonderful tissue, woven no doubt, in that country of spiders, called
Flanders, and which of itself cost more than the whole of your former
wardrobe."
"Ah, Mimi! Forgive me--I should say, ah, vicomtess! I was quite right,
you see, when I said to you: 'Patience, do not despair, the future is
big with cashmere shawls, glittering jewels, supper parties, and the
like.' You would not believe me, incredulous one. Well, my predictions
are, however, realized, and I am worth as much, I hope, as your 'Ladies'
Oracle,' a little octavo sorcerer you bought for five sous at a
bookstall on the Pont Neuf, and which you wearied with external
questions. Again, I ask, was I not right in my prophecies; and would you
believe me now, if I tell you that you will not stop at this? If I told
you that listening, I can hear faintly in the depths of your future,
the tramp and neighing of the horses harnessed to blue brougham, driven
by a powdered coachmen, who lets down the steps, saying, 'Where to
madam?' Would you believe me if I told you, too, that later on--ah, as
late as possible, I trust--attaining the object of a long cherished
ambition, you will have a table d'hote at Belleville Batignolles, and
will be courted by the old soldiers and bygone dandies who will come
there to play lansquenet or baccarat on the sly? But, before arriving at
this period, when the sun of your youth shall have already declined,
believe me, my dear child, you will wear out many yards of silk and
velvet, many inheritances, no doubt, will be melted down in the
crucibles of your fancies, many flowers will fade about your head, many
beneath your feet, and you will change your coat of arms many times. On
your head will glitter in turn the coronets of baroness, countess, and
marchioness, you will take for your motto, 'Inconstancy,' and you will,
according to caprice or to necessity, satisfy each in turn, or even all
at once, all the numerous adorers who will range themselves in the
ante-chamber of your heart as people do at the door of a theater at
which a popular piece is being played. Go on then, go straight onward,
your mind lightened of recollections which have been replaced by
ambition; go, the road is broad, and we hope it will long be smooth to
your feet, but we hope, above all, that all these sumptuosities, these
fine toilettes, may not too soon become the shroud in which your
liveliness will be buried."
Thus spoke the painter Marcel to Mademoiselle Mimi, whom he had met
three or four days after her second divorce from the poet Rodolphe.
Although he was obliged to veil the raillery with which he besprinkled
her horoscope, Mademoiselle Mimi was not the dupe of Marcel's fine
words, and understood perfectly well that with little respect for her
new title, he was chaffing her to bits.
"You are cruel towards me, Marcel," said Mademoiselle Mimi, "it is
wrong. I was always very friendly with you when I was Rodolphe's
mistress, and if I have left him, it was, after all, his fault. It was
he who packed me off in a hurry, and, besides, how did he behave to me
during the last few days I spent with him. I was very unhappy, I can
tell you. You do not know what a man Rodolphe was; a mixture of anger
and jealousy, who killed me by bits. He loved me, I know, but his love
was as dangerous as a loaded gun. What a life I led for six months. Ah,
Marcel! I do not want to make myself out better than I am, but I
suffered a great deal with Rodolphe; you know it too, very well. It is
not poverty that made me leave him, no I assure you I had grown
accustomed to it, and I repeat it was he who sent me away. He trampled
on my self-esteem; he told me that he no longer loved me; that I must
get another lover. He even went so far as to indicate a young man who
was courting me, and by his taunts, he served to bring me and this
young man together. I went with him as much out of spite as from
necessity, for I did not love him. You know very well yourself that I do
not care for such very young fellows. They are as wearisome and
sentimental as harmonicas. Well, what is done is done. I do not regret
it, and I would do the same over again. Now that he no longer has me
with him, and knows me to be happy with another, Rodolphe is furious and
very unhappy. I know someone who met him the other day; his eyes were
quite red. That does not astonish me. I felt quite sure it would come to
this, and that he would run after me, but you can tell him that he will
only lose his time, and that this time it is quite in earnest and for
good. Is it long since you saw him, Marcel and is it true that he is
much altered?" inquired Mimi in quite another tone.
"He is greatly altered indeed," replied Marcel.
"He is grieving, that is certain, but what am I to do? So much the worse
for him, he would have it so. It had to come to an end somehow. Try to
console him."
"Oh!" answered Marcel quickly. "The worst of the job is over. Do not
disturb yourself about it, Mimi."
"You are not telling the truth, my dear fellow," said Mimi, with an
ironical little pout. "Rodolphe will not be so quickly consoled as all
that. If you knew what a state he was in the night before I left. It was
a Friday, I would not stay that night at my new lover's because I am
superstitious, and Friday is an unlucky day."
"You are wrong, Mimi, in love affairs Friday is a lucky day; the
ancients called it Dies Veneris."
"I do not know Latin," said Mademoiselle Mimi, continuing her narration.
"I was coming back then from Paul's and found Rodolphe waiting for me in
the street. It was late, past midnight, and I was hungry for I had had
no dinner. I asked Rodolphe to go and get something for supper. He came
back half an hour later, he had run about a great deal to get nothing
worth speaking of, some bread, wine, sardines, cheese, and an apple
tart. I had gone to bed during his absence, and he laid the table beside
the bed. I pretended not to notice him, but I could see him plainly, he
was pale as death. He shuddered and walked about the room like a man who
does not know what he wants to do. He noticed several packages of
clothes on the floor in one corner. The sight of them seemed to annoy
him, and he placed the screen in front of them in order not to see them.
When all was ready we began to sup, he tried to make me drink, but I was
no longer hungry or thirsty, and my heart was quite full. He was cold,
for we had nothing to make a fire of, and one could hear the wind
whistling in the chimney. It was very sad. Rodolphe looked at me, his
eyes were fixed; he put his hand in mine and I felt it tremble, it was
burning and icy all at once. 'This is the funeral supper of our loves,'
he said to me in a low tone. I did not answer, but I had not the courage
to withdraw my hand from his. 'I am sleepy,' said I at last, 'it is
late, let us go to sleep.' Rodolphe looked at me. I had tied one of his
handkerchiefs about my head on account of the cold. He took it off
without saying a word. 'Why do you want to take that off?' said I. 'I am
cold.' 'Oh, Mimi!' said he. 'I beg of you, it will not matter to you, to
put on your little striped cap for tonight.' It was a nightcap of
striped cotton, white and brown. Rodolphe was very fond of seeing me in
this cap, it reminded him of several nights of happiness, for that was
how we counted our happy days. When I thought it was the last time that
I should sleep beside him I dared not refuse to satisfy this fancy of
his. I got up and hunted out my striped cap that was at the bottom of
one of my packages."
"Out of forgetfulness I forgot to replace the screen. Rodolphe noticed
it and hid the packages just as he had already done before. 'Good
night,' said he. 'Good night,' I answered. I thought that he was going
to kiss me and I should not have hindered him, but he only took my hand,
which he carried to his lips. You know, Marcel, how fond he was of
kissing my hands. I heard his teeth chatter and I felt his body as cold
as marble. He still held my hand and he laid his head on my shoulder,
which was soon quite wet. Rodolphe was in a fearful state. He bit the
sheets to avoid crying out, but I could plainly hear his stifled sobs
and I still felt his tears flowing on my shoulder, which was first
scalded and then chilled. At that moment I needed all my courage and I
did need it, I can tell you. I had only to say a word, I had only to
turn my head, and my lips would have met those of Rodolphe, and we
should have made it up once more. Ah! For a moment I really thought that
he was going to die in my arms, or that, at least, he would go mad, as
he almost did once before, you remember? I felt I was going to yield, I
was going to recant first, I was going to clasp him in my arms, for
really one must have been utterly heartless to remain insensible to such
grief. But I recollected the words he had said to me the day before,
'You have no spirit if you stay with me, for I no longer love you,' Ah!
As I recalled those bitter words I would have seen Rodolphe ready to
die, and if it had only needed a kiss from me to save him, I would have
turned away my lips and let him perish."
"At last, overcome by fatigue, I sank into a half-sleep. I could still
hear Rodolphe sobbing, and I can swear to you, Marcel, that this sobbing
went on all night long, and that when day broke and I saw in the bed, in
which I had slept for the last time, the lover whom I was going to
leave for another's arms, I was terribly frightened to see the havoc
wrought by this grief on Rodolphe's face. He got up, like myself,
without saying a word, and almost fell flat at the first steps he took,
he was so weak and downcast. However, he dressed himself very quickly,
and only asked me how matters stood and when I was going to leave. I
told him that I did not know. He went off without bidding goodbye or
shaking hands. That is how we separated. What a blow it must have been
to his heart no longer to find me there on coming home, eh?"
"I was there when Rodolphe came in," said Marcel to Mimi, who was out of
breath from speaking so long. "As he was taking his key from the
landlady, she said, 'The little one has left.' 'Ah!' replied Rodolphe.
'I am not astonished, I expected it.' And he went up to his room,
whither I followed him, fearing some crisis, but nothing occurred. 'As
it is too late to go and hire another room this evening we will do so
tomorrow morning,' said he, 'we will go together. Now let us see after
some dinner.' I thought that he wanted to get drunk, but I was wrong. We
dined very quietly at a restaurant where you have sometimes been with
him. I had ordered some Beaune to stupefy Rodolphe a bit. 'This was
Mimi's favorite wine,' said he, 'we have often drunk it together at this
very table. I remember one day she said to me, holding out her glass,
which she had already emptied several times, 'Fill up again, it is good
for one's bones.' A poor pun, eh? Worthy, at the most, of the mistress
of a farce writer. Ah! She could drink pretty fairly.'"
"Seeing that he was inclined to stray along the path of recollection I
spoke to him about something else, and then it was no longer a question
of you. He spent the whole evening with me and seemed as calm as the
Mediterranean. But what astonished me most was, that this calmness was
not at all affected. It was genuine indifference. At midnight we went
home. 'You seem surprised at my coolness in the position in which I find
myself,' said he to me, 'well, let me point out a comparison to you, my
dear fellow, it if is commonplace it has, at least, the merit of being
accurate. My heart is like a cistern the tap of which has been turned
on all night, in the morning not a drop of water is left. My heart is
really the same, last night I wept away all the tears that were left me.
It is strange, but I thought myself richer in grief, and yet by a single
night of suffering I am ruined, cleaned out. On my word of honor it is
as I say. Now, in the very bed in which I all but died last night beside
a woman who was no more moved than a stone, I shall sleep like a deck
laborer after a hard day's work, while she rests her head on the pillow
of another.' 'Hambug,' I thought to myself. 'I shall no sooner have left
him than he will be dashing his head against the wall.' However, I left
Rodolphe alone and went to my own room, but I did not go to bed. At
three in the morning I thought I heard a noise in Rodolphe's room and I
went down in a hurry, thinking to find him in a desperate fever."
"Well?" said Mimi.
"Well my dear, Rodolphe was sleeping, the bed clothes were quite in
order and everything proved that he had soon fallen asleep, and that his
slumbers had been calm."
"It is possible," said Mimi, "he was so worn out by the night before,
but the next day?"
"The next day Rodolphe came and roused me up early and we went and took
rooms in another house, into which we moved the same evening."
"And," asked Mimi, "what did he do on leaving the room we had occupied,
what did he say on abandoning the room in which he had loved me so?"
"He packed up his things quietly," replied Marcel, "and as he found in a
drawer a pair of thread gloves you had forgotten, as well as two or
three of your letters--"
"I know," said Mimi in a tone which seemed to imply, "I forgot them on
purpose so that he might have some souvenir of me left! What did he do
with them?" she added.
"If I remember rightly," said Marcel, "he threw the letters into the
fireplace and the gloves out of the window, but without any theatrical
effort, and quite naturally, as one does when one wants to get rid of
something useless."
"My dear Monsieur Marcel, I assure you that from the bottom of my heart
I hope that this indifference may last. But, once more in all sincerity,
I do not believe in such a speedy cure and, in spite of all you tell me,
I am convinced that my poet's heart is broken."
"That may be," replied Marcel, taking leave of Mimi, "but unless I may
be very much mistaken, the pieces are still good for something."
During this colloquy in a public thoroughfare, Vicomte Paul was awaiting
his new mistress, who was behindhand in her appointment, and decidedly
disagreeable towards him. He seated himself at her feet and warbled his
favorite strain, namely, that she was charming, fair as a lily, gentle
as a lamb, but that he loved her above all on account of the beauties of
her soul.
"Ah!" thought Mimi, loosening the waves of her dark hair over her snowy
shoulders, "my lover Rodolphe, was not so exclusive."
As Marcel had stated, Rodolphe seemed to be radically cured of his love
for Mademoiselle Mimi, and three or four days after his separation, the
poet reappeared completely metamorphosed. He was attired with an
elegance that must have rendered him unrecognizable by his very looking
glass. Nothing, indeed, about him seemed to justify the fear that he
intended to commit suicide, as Mademoiselle Mimi had started the rumor,
with all kinds of hypocritical condolences. Rodolphe was, in fact, quite
calm. He listened with unmoved countenance to all the stories told him
about the new and sumptuous existence led by his mistress--who took
pleasure in keeping him informed on these points--by a young girl who
had remained her confidant, and who had occasion to see Rodolphe almost
every evening.
"Mimi is very happy with Vicomte Paul," the poet was told. "She seems
thoroughly smitten with him, only one thing causes her any uneasiness,
she is afraid least you should disturb her tranquillity by coming after
her, which by the way, would be dangerous for you, for the vicomte
worships his mistress and is a good fencer."
"Oh," said Rodolphe. "She can sleep in peace, I have no wish to go and
cast vinegar over the sweetness of her honeymoon. As to her young
lover, he can leave his dagger at home like Gastibelza. I have no wish
to attempt the life of a young gentleman who has still the happiness of
being nursed by illusions."
As they did not fail to carry back to Mimi the way in which her ex-lover
received all these details, she on her part did not forget to reply,
shrugging her shoulders:
"That is all very well, you will see what will come of it in a day or
two."
However, Rodolphe was himself, and more than any one else, astonished at
this sudden indifference which, without passing through the usual
transitions of sadness and melancholy, had followed the stormy feelings
by which he had been stirred only a few days before. Forgetfulness, so
slow to come--above all for the virtues of love--that forgetfulness
which they summon so loudly and repulse with equal loudness when they
feel it approaching, that pitiless consoler that had all at once, and
without his being able to defend himself from it, invaded Rodolphe's
heart, and the name of the woman he so dearly loved could now be heard
without awakening any echo in it. Strange fact; Rodolphe, whose memory
was strong enough to recall to mind things that had occurred in the
farthest days of his past and beings who had figured in or influenced
his most remote existence--Rodolphe could not, whatever efforts he might
make, recall with clearness after four days' separation, the features of
that mistress who had nearly broken his life between her slender
fingers. He could no longer recall the softness of the eyes by the light
of which he had so often fallen asleep. He could no longer remember the
notes of that voice whose anger and whose caressing utterances had
alternately maddened him. A poet, who was a friend of his, and who had
not seen him since his absence, met him one evening. Rodolphe seemed
busy and preoccupied, he was walking rapidly along the street, twirling
his cane.
"Hallo," said the poet, holding out his hand, "so here you are," and he
looked curiously at Rodolphe. Seeing that the latter looked somewhat
downcast he thought it right to adopt a consoling tone.
"Come, courage, my dear fellow. I know that it is hard, but then it must
always have come to this. Better now than later on; in three months you
will be quite cured."
"What are you driving at?" said Rodolphe. "I am not ill, my dear
fellow."
"Come," said the other, "do not play the braggart. I know the whole
story and if I did not, I could read it in your face."
"Take care, you are making a mistake," said Rodolphe, "I am very much
annoyed this evening, it is true, but you have not exactly hit on the
cause of my annoyance."
"Good, but why defend yourself? It is quite natural. A connection that
has lasted a couple of years cannot be broken off so readily."
"Everyone tells me the same thing," said Rodolphe, getting impatient.
"Well, upon my honor, you make a mistake, you and the others. I am very
vexed, and I look like it, that is possible, but this is the reason why;
I was expecting my tailor with a new dress coat today, and he had not
come. That is what I am annoyed about."
"Bad, bad," said the other laughing.
"Not at all bad, but good on the contrary, very good, excellent in fact.
Follow my argument and you shall see."
"Come," said the poet, "I will listen to you. Just prove to me how any
one can in reason look so wretched because a tailor has failed to keep
his word. Come, come, I am waiting."
"Well," said Rodolphe, "you know very well that the greatest effects
spring from the most trifling causes. I ought this evening to pay a very
important visit, and I cannot do so for want of a dress coat. Now do you
see it?"
"Not at all. There is up to this no sufficient reason shown for a state
of desolation. You are in despair because---. You are very silly to try
to deceive. That is my opinion."
"My friend," said Rodolphe, "you are very opinionated. It is always
enough to vex us when we miss happiness, and at any rate pleasure,
because it is almost always so much lost for ever, and we are wrong in
saying, 'I will make up for it another time.' I will resume; I had an
appointment this evening with a lady. I was to meet her at a friend's
house, whence I should, perhaps taken her home to mine, if it were
nearer than her own, and even if it were not. At this house there was a
party. At parties one must wear a dress coat. I have no dress coat. My
tailor was to bring me one; he does not do so. I do not go to the party.
I do not meet the lady who is, perhaps, met by someone else. I do not
see her home either to my place or hers, and she is, perhaps, seen home
by another. So as I told you, I have lost an opportunity of happiness
and pleasure; hence I am vexed; hence I look so, and quite naturally."
"Very good," said his friend, "with one foot just out of one hell, you
want to put the other foot in another; but, my dear fellow, when I met
you, you seemed to be waiting for some one."
"So I was."
"But," continued the other, "we are in the neighborhood in which your
ex-mistress is living. What is there to prove that you were not waiting
for her?"
"Although separated from her, special reasons oblige me to live in this
neighborhood. But, although neighbors, we are as distant as if she were
at one pole and I at the other. Besides, at this particular moment, my
ex-mistress is seated at her fireside taking lessons in French grammar
from Vicomte Paul, who wishes to bring her back to the paths of virtue
by the road of orthography. Good heavens, how he will spoil her!
However, that regards himself, now that he is editor-in-chief of her
happiness. You see, therefore, that your reflections are absurd, and
that, instead of following up the half-effaced traces of my old love, I
am on the track of my new one, who is already to some extent my
neighbor, and will become yet more so: for I am willing to take all the
necessary steps, and if she will take the rest, we shall not be long in
coming to an understanding."
"Really," said the poet, "are you in love again already?"
"This is what it is," replied Rodolphe, "my heart resembles those
lodgings that are advertised to let as soon as a tenant leaves them. As
soon as one love leaves my heart, I put up a bill for another. The
locality besides is habitable and in perfect repair."
"And who is this new idol? Where and when did you make her
acquaintance?"
"Come," said Rodolphe, "let us go through things in order. When Mimi
went away I thought that I should never be in love again in my life, and
imagined that my heart was dead of fatigue, exhaustion, whatever you
like. It had been beating so long and so fast, too fast, that the thing
was probable. In short I believed it dead, quite dead, and thought of
burying it like Marlborough. In honor of the occasion I gave a little
funeral dinner, to which I invited some of my friends. The guests were
to assume a melancholy air, and the bottles had crape around their
necks."
"You did not invite me."
"Excuse me, but I did not know your address in that part of cloudland
which you inhabit. One of the guests had brought a young lady, a young
woman also abandoned a short time before by her lover. She was told my
story. It was one of my friends who plays very nicely upon the
violoncello of sentiment who did this. He spoke to the young widow of
the qualities of my heart, the poor defunct whom we were about to inter,
and invited her to drink to its eternal repose. 'Come now,' said she,
raising her glass, 'I drink, on the contrary, to its very good health,'
and she gave me a look, enough, as they say, to awake the dead. It was
indeed the occasion to say so, for she had scarcely finished her toast
than I heard my heart singing the _O Filii_ of the Resurrection. What
would you have done in my place?"
"A pretty question--what is her name?"
"I do not know yet, I shall only ask her at the moment we sign our
lease. I know very well that in the opinion of some people I have
overstepped the legal delays, but you see I plead in my own court, and I
have granted a dispensation. What I do know is that she brings me as a
dowry cheerfulness, which is the health of the soul, and health which
is the cheerfulness of the body."
"Is she pretty?"
"Very pretty, especially as regards her complexion; one would say that
she made up every morning with Watteau's palate, 'She is fair, and her
conquering glances kindle love in every heart.' As witness mine."
"A blonde? You astonish me."
"Yes. I have had enough of ivory and ebony; I am going in for a
blonde," and Rodolphe began to skip about as he sang:
"Praises sing unto my sweet,
She is fair,
Yellow as the ripening wheat
Is her hair."
"Poor Mimi," said his friend, "so soon forgotten."
This name cast into Rodolphe's mirthsomeness, suddenly gave another turn
to the conversation. Rodolphe took his friend by the arm, and related to
him at length the causes of his rupture with Mademoiselle Mimi, the
terrors that had awaited him when she had left; how he was in despair
because he thought that she had carried off with her all that remained
to him of youth and passion, and how two days later he had recognized
his mistake on feeling the gunpowder in his heart, though swamped with
so many sobs and tears, dry, kindle, and explode at the first look of
love cast at him by the first woman he met. He narrated the sudden and
imperious invasion of forgetfulness, without his even having summoned it
in aid of his grief, and how this grief was dead and buried in the said
forgetfulness.
"Is it not a miracle?" said he to the poet, who, knowing by heart and
from experience all the painful chapters of shattered loves, replied:
"No, no, my friend, there is no more of a miracle for you than for the
rest of us. What has happened to you has happened to myself. The women
we love, when they become our mistresses, cease to be for us what they
really are. We do not see them only with a lover's eyes, but with a
poet's. As a painter throws on the shoulders of a lay figure the
imperial purple or the star-spangled robe of a Holy Virgin, so we have
always whole stores of glittering mantles and robes of pure white linen
which we cast over the shoulders of dull, sulky, or spiteful creatures,
and when they have thus assumed the garb in which our ideal loves float
before us in our waking dreams, we let ourselves be taken in by this
disguise, we incarnate our dream in the first corner, and address her
in our language, which she does not understand. However, let this
creature at whose feet we live prostrate, tear away herself the dense
envelope beneath which we have hidden her, and reveal to us her evil
nature and her base instincts; let her place our hands on the spot where
her heart should be, but where nothing beats any longer, and has perhaps
never beaten; let her open her veil, and show us her faded eyes, pale
lips, and haggard features; we replace that veil and exclaim, 'It is not
true! It is not true! I love you, and you, too, love me! This white
bosom holds a heart that has all its youthfulness; I love you, and you
love me! You are beautiful, you are young. At the bottom of all your
vices there is love. I love you, and you love me!' Then in the end,
always quite in the end, when, after having all very well put triple
bandages over our eyes, we see ourselves the dupes of our mistakes, we
drive away the wretch who was our idol of yesterday; we take back from
her the golden veils of poesy, which, on the morrow, we again cast on
the shoulders of some other unknown, who becomes at once an
aureola-surrounded idol. That is what we all are--monstrous egoists--who
love love for love's sake--you understand me? We sip the divine liquor
from the first cup that comes to hand. 'What matter the bottle, so long
as we draw intoxication from it?'"
"What you say is as true as that two and two make four," said Rodolphe
to the poet.
"Yes," replied the latter, "it is true, and as sad as three quarters of
the things that are true. Good night."
Two days later Mademoiselle Mimi learned that Rodolphe had a new
mistress. She only asked one thing--whether he kissed her hands as often
as he used to kiss her own?
"Quite as often," replied Marcel. "In addition, he is kissing the hairs
of her head one after the other, and they are to remain with one another
until he has finished."
"Ah!" replied Mimi, passing her hand through her own tresses. "It was
lucky he did not think of doing the same with me, or we should have
remained together all our lives. Do you think it is really true that he
no longer loves me at all?"
"Humph--and you, do you still love him?"
"I! I never loved him in my life."
"Yes, Mimi, yes. You loved him at those moments when a woman's heart
changes place. You loved him; do nothing to deny it; it is your
justification."
"Bah!" said Mimi, "he loves another now."
"True," said Marcel, "but no matter. Later on the remembrance of you
will be to him like the flowers that we place fresh and full of perfume
between the leaves of a book, and which long afterwards we find dead,
discolored, and faded, but still always preserving a vague perfume of
their first freshness."
* * * * *
One evening, when she was humming in a low tone to herself, Vicomte Paul
said to Mimi, "What are you singing, dear?"
"The funeral chant of our loves, that my lover Rodolphe has lately
composed."
And she began to sing:--
"I have not a sou now, my dear, and the rule
In such a case surely is soon to forget,
So tearless, for she who would weep is a fool,
You'll blot out all mem'ry of me, eh, my pet?
Well, still all the same we have spent as you know
Some days that were happy--and each with its night,
They did not last long, but, alas, here below,
The shortest are ever those we deem most bright."