rong perfume of orange blossoms
pervaded the air. I said:

"Will you see her again?"

"Parbleu! I now have here, in land and money, seven to eight thousand
francs. When I reach a million I shall sell out and go away. I shall
have enough to live on with her for a year--one whole year. And then,
good-bye, my life will be finished."

"But after that?" I asked.

"After that, I do not know. That will be all, I may possibly ask her to
take me as a valet de chambre."

YVETTE SAMORIS

"The Comtesse Samoris."

"That lady in black over there?"

"The very one. She's wearing mourning for her daughter, whom she
killed."

"You don't mean that seriously? How did she die?"

"Oh! it is a very simple story, without any crime in it, any violence."

"Then what really happened?"

"Almost nothing. Many courtesans are born to be virtuous women, they
say; and many women called virtuous are born to be courtesans--is that
not so? Now, Madame Samoris, who was born a courtesan, had a daughter
born a virtuous woman, that's all."

"I don't quite understand you."

"I'll--explain what I mean. The comtesse is nothing but a common,
ordinary parvenue originating no one knows where. A Hungarian or
Wallachian countess or I know not what. She appeared one winter in
apartments she had taken in the Champs Elysees, that quarter for
adventurers and adventuresses, and opened her drawing-room to the first
comer or to any one that turned up.

"I went there. Why? you will say. I really can't tell you. I went there,
as every one goes to such places because the women are facile and the
men are dishonest. You know that set composed of filibusters with varied
decorations, all noble, all titled, all unknown at the embassies, with
the exception of those who are spies. All talk of their honor without
the slightest occasion for doing so, boast of their ancestors, tell you
about their lives, braggarts, liars, sharpers, as dangerous as the false
cards they have up their sleeves, as delusive as their names--in short,
the aristocracy of the bagnio.

"I adore these people. They are interesting to study, interesting to
know, amusing to understand, often clever, never commonplace like public
functionaries. Their wives are always pretty, with a slight flavor of
foreign roguery, with the mystery of their existence, half of it perhaps
spent in a house of correction. They have, as a rule, magnificent eyes
and incredible hair. I adore them also.

"Madame