POOR LITTLE MAM’ZELLE ZIZI

Oh, how happy Desiree was!

Frantz came every day and sat at her feet on the little low chair, as in the good old days, and he no longer came to talk of Sidonie.

As soon as she began to work in the morning, she would see the door open softly.  “Good morning, Mam’zelle Zizi.”  He always called her now by the name she had borne as a child; and if you could know how prettily he said it:  “Good morning, Mam’zelle Zizi.”

In the evening they waited for “the father” together, and while she worked he made her shudder with the story of his adventures.

“What is the matter with you?  You’re not the same as you used to be,” Mamma Delobelle would say, surprised to see her in such high spirits and above all so active.  For instead of remaining always buried in her easy-chair, with the self-renunciation of a young grandmother, the little creature was continually jumping up and running to the window as lightly as if she were putting out wings; and she practised standing erect, asking her mother in a whisper: 

“Do you notice it when I am not walking?”

From her graceful little head, upon which she had previously concentrated all her energies in the arrangement of her hair, her coquetry extended over her whole person, as did her fine, waving tresses when she unloosed them.  Yes, she was very, very coquettish now; and everybody noticed it.  Even the “birds and insects for ornament” assumed a knowing little air.

Ah, yes!  Desiree Delobelle was happy.  For some days M. Frantz had been talking of their all going into the country together; and as the father, kind and generous as always, graciously consented to allow the ladies to take a day’s rest, all four set out one Sunday morning.

Oh! the lovely drive, the lovely country, the lovely river, the lovely trees!

Do not ask her where they went; Desiree never knew.  But she will tell you that the sun was brighter there than anywhere else, the birds more joyous, the woods denser; and she will not lie.

The bouquet that the little cripple brought back from that beautiful excursion made her room fragrant for a week.  Among the hyacinths, the violets, the white-thorn, was a multitude of nameless little flowers, those flowers of the lowly which grow from nomadic seed scattered everywhere along the roads.

Gazing at the slender, pale blue and bright pink blossoms, with all the delicate shades that flowers invented before colorists, many and many a time during that week Desiree took her excursion again.  The violets reminded her of the little moss-covered mound on which she had picked them, seeking them under the leaves, her fingers touching Frantz’s.  They had found these great water-lilies on the edge of a ditch, still damp from the winter rains, and, in order to reach them, she had leaned very heavily on Frantz’s arm.  All these memories occurred to her as she worked.  Meanwhile the sun, shining in at the open window, made the feathers of the hummingbirds glisten.  The springtime, youth, the songs of the birds, the fragrance of the flowers, transfigured that dismal fifth-floor workroom, and Desiree said in all seriousness to Mamma Delobelle, putting her nose to her friend’s bouquet: