After her crayfish were disposed of, P’tit-Bleu called for coffee and lit a cigarette. And then, between whiffs and sips, she prattled gaily of the subject which, of all subjects, she was probably best qualified to treat, and which assuredly, for the time being, possessed most interest for her listener—P’tit-Bleu. She told me, as it were, the story of her birth, parentage, life, and exploits. It was the simplest story, the commonest story. Her mother (la recherche de la paternité est interdite), her mother had died when she was sixteen, and Jeanne (that was her baptismal name, Jeanne Mérois) had gone to work in the shop of a dressmaker, where, sewing hard from eight in the morning till seven at night, with an hour’s intermission at noon, she could earn, in good seasons, as much as two-francs-fifty a day. Two and a half francs a day—say twelve shillings a week—in good seasons; and one must eat, and lodge, and clothe one’s body, and pay one’s laundress, in good seasons and in bad. It scarcely satisfied her aspirations, and she took to dancing. Now she danced three nights a week at Bullier, and during the day gave lessons in her art to a score of pupils, by which means she contrived to keep the wolf at a respectful distance from her door. “Tiens, here’s my card,” she concluded, and handed me an oblong bit of pasteboard, on which was printed, “P’tit-Bleu, Professeur de Danse, 22, Rue Monsieur le Prince.” “And you have no lover?” questioned I. She flashed a look upon me that was quite inexpressibly arch, and responded instantly, with the charmingest little pout, “But yes—since I’m supping with him.”