She was beautiful also among the goat-skins of the Cossacks and the
English uniforms, pushing her way through the throngs of men and letting
her bare shoulders dazzle them on the steps of the gambling houses,
under the jewellers' windows, beneath the lights of the cafes, between
starvation and wealth.
What are you regretting? I am regretting the _fille de joie_.
On the boulevard, one evening, I caught a glimpse of her as she passed
under the gaslight, with watchful and eager eyes, dragging her feet over
the sidewalk. I saw her pale face on the street-corner, while the rain
wet the flowers in her hair, and heard her soft voice calling to the
men, while her flesh shivered in her low-necked bodice.
It was her last day; after that she disappeared.
Fear not that she will ever return, for she is dead, quite dead! Her
dress is made high, she has morals, objects to coarse language, and puts
the sous she earns in a savings bank.
Cleared of her presence, the street has lost the only poetry it still
retained; they have filtered the gutter and sorted the garbage.
In a little while, the mountebanks will also have disappeared, in order
to make room for magnetic _seances_ and reform banquets, and the
rope-dancer with her spangled skirt and long balancing-pole will be as
remote from us as the bayadere of the Ganges.
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