It was said so tenderly, with that childishness of accent which foreigners have when expressing themselves in French, that the girl was deeply moved.  Her heart that had seemed turned to stone opened, a burning flood came pouring from her eyes, and she rushed, flung herself into the arms of the dancer.  “Ah, godmother, how good you are to me!  Yes, yes, don’t leave me any more.  Stay with me always.  Life frightens and disgusts me.  I see so much hypocrisy in it, so much falsehood.”  And the old woman arranged for herself a silken and embroidered nest in this house so like a traveller’s camp laden with treasures from every land, and the suggested dual life began for these two different natures.

It was no small sacrifice that Constance had made for the dear demon in quitting her Fontainebleau retreat for Paris, which inspired her with terror.  Ever since the day when this dancer, with her extravagant caprices, who made princely fortunes flow and disappear through her five open fingers, had descended from her triumphant position, a little of its dazzling glitter still in her eyes, and had attempted to resume an ordinary existence, to manage her little income and her modest household, she had been the object of a thousand impudent exploitations, of frauds that were easy in view of the ignorance of this poor butterfly that was frightened by reality and came into collision with all its unknown difficulties.  Living in Felicia’s house, the responsibility became still more serious by reason of the wastefulness introduced long ago by the father and continued by the daughter, two artists knowing nothing of economy.  She had, moreover, other difficulties to conquer.  She found the studio insupportable with its permanent atmosphere of tobacco smoke, an impenetrable cloud for her, in which the discussions on art, the analysis of ideas, were lost and which infallibly gave her a headache.  “Chaff,” above all, frightened her.  As a foreigner, as at one time a divinity of the green-room, brought up on out-of-date compliments, on gallantries a la Dorat, she did not understand it, and would feel terrified in the presence of the wild exaggerations, the paradoxes of these Parisians refined by the liberty of the studio.

That kind of thing was intimidating to her who had never possessed wit save in the vivacity of her feet, and reduced her simply to the rank of a lady-companion; and, seeing this amiable old dame sitting, silent and smiling, her knitting in her lap, like one of Chardin’s bourgeoises, or hastening by the side of her cook up the long Rue de Chaillot, where the nearest market happened to be, one would never have guessed that that simple old body had ruled kings, princes, the whole class of amorous nobles and financiers, at the caprice of her step and pirouettings.

Paris is full of such fallen stars, extinguished by the crowd.

Some of these famous ones, these conquerors of a former day, cherish a rage in their heart; others, on the contrary, enjoy the past blissfully, digest in an ineffable content all their glorious and ended joys, asking only repose, silence, shadow, good enough for memory and contemplations, so that when they die people are quite astonished to learn that they had been still living.