Madame Depine removed her wig and exposed her poor old scalp, with
its thin, forlorn wisps and patches of grey hair, grotesque, almost
indecent, in its nudity. But the _coiffeur_ measured it in sublime
seriousness, putting his tape this way and that way, while Madame
Valiere's eyes danced in sympathetic excitement.
"You may as well measure my friend too," remarked Madame Depine, as
she reassumed her glossy brown wig (which seemed propriety itself
compared with the bald cranium).
"What an idea!" ejaculated Madame Valiere. "To what end?"
"Since you are here," returned Madame Depine, indifferently. "You may
as well leave your measurements. Then when you decide yourself--Is it
not so, monsieur?"
The _coiffeur_, like a good man of business, eagerly endorsed the
suggestion. "Perfectly, madame."
"But if one's head should change!" said Madame Valiere, trembling with
excitement at the vivid imminence of the visioned wig.
"_Souvent femme varie_, madame," said the _coiffeur_. "But it is the
inside, not the outside of the head."
"But you said one is not the dome of the Invalides," Madame Valiere
reminded him.
"He spoke of our old blocks," Madame Depine intervened hastily. "At
our age one changes no more."
Thus persuaded, the "Princess" in her turn denuded herself of her
wealth of wig, and Madame Depine watched with unsmiling satisfaction
the stretchings of tape across the ungainly cranium.
"_C'est bien_," she said. "I return with your fifty francs on the
instant."
And having seen her "Princess" safely ensconced in the attic, she
rifled the stocking, and returned to the _coiffeur_.
When she emerged from the shop, the vindictive endurance had vanished
from her face, and in its place reigned an angelic exaltation.