“And I would have liked to know whose widow
she was on that special day.”
What a strange idea it was for me to choose Mademoiselle
Pearl for queen that evening!
Every year I celebrate Twelfth Night with my old friend
Chantal. My father, who was his most intimate
friend, used to take me round there when I was a child.
I continued the custom, and I doubtless shall continue
it as long as I live and as long as there is a Chantal
in this world.
The Chantals lead a peculiar existence; they live
in Paris as though they were in Grasse, Evetot, or
Pont-a-Mousson.
They have a house with a little garden near the observatory.
They live there as though they were in the country.
Of Paris, the real Paris, they know nothing at all,
they suspect nothing; they are so far, so far away!
However, from time to time, they take a trip into it.
Mademoiselle Chantal goes to lay in her provisions,
as it is called in the family. This is how they
go to purchase their provisions:
Mademoiselle Pearl, who has the keys to the kitchen
closet (for the linen closets are administered by
the mistress herself), Mademoiselle Pearl gives warning
that the supply of sugar is low, that the preserves
are giving out, that there is not much left in the
bottom of the coffee bag. Thus warned against
famine, Mademoiselle Chantal passes everything in
review, taking notes on a pad. Then she puts down
a lot of figures and goes through lengthy calculations
and long discussions with Mademoiselle Pearl.
At last they manage to agree, and they decide upon
the quantity of each thing of which they will lay
in a three months’ provision; sugar, rice, prunes,
coffee, preserves, cans of peas, beans, lobster, salt
or smoked fish, etc., etc. After which
the day for the purchasing is determined on and they
go in a cab with a railing round the top and drive
to a large grocery store on the other side of the river
in the new sections of the town.
Madame Chantal and Mademoiselle Pearl make this trip
together, mysteriously, and only return at dinner
time, tired out, although still excited, and shaken
up by the cab, the roof of which is covered with bundles
and bags, like an express wagon.
For the Chantals all that part of Paris situated on
the other side of the Seine constitutes the new quarter,
a section inhabited by a strange, noisy population,
which cares little for honor, spends its days in dissipation,
its nights in revelry, and which throws money out of
the windows. From time to time, however, the
young girls are taken to the Opera-Comique or the
Theatre Francais, when the play is recommended by
the paper which is read by M. Chantal.
At present the young ladies are respectively nineteen
and seventeen. They are two pretty girls, tall
and fresh, very well brought up, in fact, too well
brought up, so much so that they pass by unperceived
like two pretty dolls. Never would the idea come
to me to pay the slightest attention or to pay court
to one of the young Chantal ladies; they are so immaculate
that one hardly dares speak to them; one almost feels
indecent when bowing to them.
