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“What is the matter, then?” breathed Madame Depine.

The “Princess” recovered herself. “Nothing, nothing. Only my nephew who is marrying.”

“Soon?”

“The middle of next month.”

“Then you will need to give presents!”

“One gives a watch, a bagatelle, and then–there is time. It is nothing. How good the coffee is this morning!”

They had not changed the name of the brew: it is not only in religious evolutions that old names are a comfort.

They walked to the hairdresser’s in silence. The triumphal procession had become almost a dead march. Only once was the silence broken.

“I suppose they have invited you down for the wedding?” said Madame Depine.

“Yes,” said Madame Valiere.

They walked on.

The coiffeur was at his door, sunning his aproned stomach, and twisting his moustache as if it were a customer’s. Emotion overcame Madame Depine at the sight of him. She pushed Madame Valiere into the tobacconist’s instead.

“I have need of a stamp,” she explained, and demanded one for five centimes. She leaned over the counter babbling aimlessly to the proprietor, postponing the great moment. Madame Valiere lost the clue to her movements, felt her suddenly as a stranger. But finally Madame Depine drew herself together and led the way into the coiffeurs. The proprietor, who had reentered his parlour, reemerged gloomily.

Madame Valiere took the word. “We are thinking of ordering a wig.”

“Cash in advance, of course,” said the coiffeur.

“Comment!” cried Madame Valiere, indignantly. “You do not trust my friend!”

“Madame Valiere has moved in the best society,” added Madame Depine.

“But you cannot expect me to do two hundred francs of work and then be left planted with the wigs!”

“But who said two hundred francs?” cried Madame Depine. “It is only one wig that we demand–to-day at least.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “A hundred francs, then.”

“And why should we trust you with one hundred francs?” asked Madame Depine. “You might botch the work.”

“Or fly to Italy,” added the “Princess.”

In the end it was agreed he should have fifty down and fifty on delivery.

“Measure us, while we are here,” said Madame Depine. “I will bring you the fifty francs immediately.”

“Very well,” he murmured. “Which of you?”

But Madame Valiere was already affectionately untying Madame Depine’s bonnet-strings. “It is for my friend,” she cried. “And let it be as chic and convenable as possible!”

He bowed. “An artist remains always an artist.”

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.

XII

Eleven days later Madame Valiere and Madame Depine set out on the great expedition to the hairdresser’s to try on the Wig. The “Princess’s” excitement was no less tense than the fortunate winner’s. Neither had slept a wink the night before, but the November morning was keen and bright, and supplied an excellent tonic. They conversed with animation on the English in Egypt, and Madame Depine recalled the gallant death of her son, the chasseur.