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“Ah! at that rate wigs fall from the skies,” admitted Madame Valiere.

“Especially if one has not to give dowries to one’s nieces,” said Madame Depine, boldly.

“And if one is mean on New Year’s Day,” returned Madame Valiere, with a shade less of mendacity.

They inhaled the immemorial airlessness of the staircase as if they were breathing the free air of the forests depicted on its dirty-brown wall-paper. It was the new atmosphere of self-respect that they were really absorbing. Each had at last explained herself and her brown wig to the other. An immaculate honesty (that would scorn to overcharge fifty centimes even to un Anglais), complicated with unwedded nieces in one case, with a royal shower of New Year’s gifts in the other, had kept them from selfish, if seemly, hoary-headedness.

“Ah! here is my floor,” panted Madame Valiere at length, with an air of indicating it to a thorough stranger. “Will you not come into my room and eat a fig? They are very healthy between meals.”

Madame Depine accepted the invitation, and entering her own corner of the corridor with a responsive air of foreign exploration, passed behind the door through whose keyhole she had so often peered. Ah! no wonder she had detected nothing abnormal. The room was a facsimile of her own–the same bed with the same quilt over it and the same crucifix above it, the same little table with the same books of devotion, the same washstand with the same tiny jug and basin, the same rusted, fireless grate. The wardrobe, like her own, was merely a pair of moth-eaten tartan curtains, concealing both pegs and garments from her curiosity. The only sense of difference came subtly from the folding windows, below whose railed balcony showed another view of the quarter, with steam-trams–diminished to toy trains–puffing past to the suburbs. But as Madame Depine’s eyes roved from these to the mantel-piece, she caught sight of an oval miniature of an elegant young woman, who was jewelled in many places, and corresponded exactly with her idea of a Princess!

To disguise her access of respect, she said abruptly, “It must be very noisy here from the steam-trams.”

“It is what I love, the bustle of life,” replied Madame Valiere, simply.

“Ah!” said Madame Depine, impressed beyond masking-point, “I suppose when one has had the habit of Courts–“

Madame Valiere shuddered unexpectedly. “Let us not speak of it. Take a fig.”

But Madame Depine persisted–though she took the fig. “Ah! those were brave days when we had still an Emperor and an Empress to drive to the Bois with their equipages and outriders. Ah, how pretty it was!”

“But the President has also”–a fit of coughing interrupted Madame Valiere–“has also outriders.”

“But he is so bourgeois–a mere man of the people,” said Madame Depine.

“They are the most decent sort of folk. But do you not feel cold? I will light a fire.” She bent towards the wood-box.

“No, no; do not trouble. I shall be going in a moment. I have a large fire blazing in my room.”

“Then suppose we go and sit there,” said poor Madame Valiere.

Poor Madame Depine was seized with a cough, more protracted than any of which she had complained.

“Provided it has not gone out in my absence,” she stammered at last. “I will go first and see if it is in good trim.”

“No, no; it is not worth the trouble of moving.” And Madame Valiere drew her street-cloak closer round her slim form. “But I have lived so long in Russia, I forget people call this cold.”

“Ah! the Princess travelled far?” said Madame Depine, eagerly.

“Too far,” replied Madame Valiere, with a flash of Gallic wit. “But who has told you of the Princess?”

“Madame la Proprietaire, naturally.”

“She talks too much–she and her wig!”

“If only she didn’t imagine herself a powdered marquise in it! To see her standing before the mirror in the salon!”

“The beautiful spectacle!” assented Madame Valiere.

“Ah! but I don’t forget–if she does–that her mother wheeled a fruit-barrow through the streets of Tonnerre!”