ng 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your mind lightened of recollections which have been replaced by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 repe