Vive la grisette!  Shall I not follow many an illustrious example and sing my modest paean in her praise?  Frown not, august Britannia!  Look not so severely askance upon my poor little heroine of the Quartier Latin!  Thinkest thou because thou art so eminently virtuous that she who has many a serviceable virtue of her own, shall be debarred from her share in this world’s cakes and ale?

Vive la grisette!  Let us think and speak no evil of her.  “Elle ne tient au vice que par un rayon, et s’en eloigne par les mille autres points de la circonference sociale.”  The world sees only her follies, and sees them at first sight; her good qualities lie hidden in the shade.  Is she not busy as a bee, joyous as a lark, helpful, pitiful, unselfish, industrious, contented?  How often has she not slipped her last coin into the alms-box at the hospital gate, and gone supperless to bed?  How often sat up all night, after a long day’s toil in a crowded work-room, to nurse Victorine in the fever?  How often pawned her Sunday gown and shawl, to redeem that coat without which Adolphe cannot appear before the examiners to-morrow morning?  Granted, if you will, that she has an insatiable appetite for sweets, cigarettes, and theatrical admissions—­shall she not be welcome to her tastes?  And is it her fault if her capacity in the way of miscellaneous refreshments partakes of the nature of the miraculous—­somewhat to the inconvenience of Adolphe, who has overspent his allowance?  Supposing even that she may now and then indulge (among friends) in a very modified can-can at the Chaumiere—­what does that prove, except that her heels are as light as her heart, and that her early education has been somewhat neglected?

But I am writing of a world that has vanished as completely as the lost Pleiad.  The Quartier Latin of my time is no more.  The Chaumiere is no more.  The grisette is fast dying out.  Of the Rue de la Harpe not a recognisable feature is left.  The old Place St. Michel, the fountain, the Theatre du Pantheon, are gone as if they had never been.  Whole streets, I might say whole parishes, have been swept away—­whole chapters of mediaeval history erased for ever.

Well, I love to close my eyes from time to time, and evoke the dear old haunts from their ruins; to descend once more the perilous steeps of the Rue St. Jacques, and to thread the labyrinthine by-streets that surround the Ecole de Medecine.  I see them all so plainly!  I look in at the familiar print-shops—­I meet many a long-forgotten face—­I hear many a long-forgotten voice—­I am twenty years of age and a student again!

Ah me! what a pleasant time, and what a land of enchantment!  Dingy, dilapidated, decrepit as it was, that graceless old Quartier Latin, believe me, was paved with roses and lighted with laughing gas.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE FETE AT COURBEVOIE.

“Halte la!  I thought I should catch you about this time!  They’ve been giving you unconscionable good measure to-day, though, haven’t they?  I thought Bollinet’s lecture was always over by three; and here I’ve been moralizing on the flight of Time for more than twenty minutes.”