Ah, yes, that was Mimi--she had been a dressmaker--she too had gone to the Bal Bullier--and had become the companion of a law student--it was hard to keep the pot boiling, but she had been happy--then his five years of _quartier latin_ were up, and he had gone home again and married and become bourgeois and respectable--so she came to the café, where the students are always gay and the lights are always bright, and she liked to wear silks and fine linen. Betty touched her arm: “And after that?” she asked. Babette shrugged her shoulders: “Perhaps she will marry a tradesman,” she said. “Perhaps----” She gave it up. “And after that?” Babette kissed Betty’s serious face: “Thou odd inquirer,” said she. “If you ask after that and after that, why we grow old one day--and after that die--and after that are buried--and after that, who cares?” She laughed, and stroked Betty’s hand: “Ah, and that is Marcelle--she was apprentice to a sempstress--but the work was hard, the hours long, oh so long, and the food scarce and poor--and she has only once to live--and she has Titian red hair--she, too, came to the cafés, where the students are always gay and the lights are----” There was a shout of laughter from the students. Out of the riot the quavering voice of age rose in broken falsetto, singing a snatch of song that was on the town in Betty’s childhood, a soprano passage from an old Italian opera. An old woman, with blear watery eyes, her tattered and rusty old dress hanging in an untidy bunch about her shrunken body, a few grey hairs straggling over her withered leaden face, was singing in the full operatic manner. A strange pathetic sight. So an old harpsichord sounds, awaking startled ghosts in some old-world room at the rude touch of living hands. The end of the broken song was received with loud laughter from the students, who shrieked and coughed until the tears stood in their eyes--they flung pence at the old woman’s feet. Women were standing on tables, students were crowded in a ring about her. “Thou hast danced with Victor Hugo, Margot, my pearl--show us how!” cried a bearded cub from the schools. She bowed--gathered up her seedy tattered skirts with something of the old-world grand manner that went with the stately crinoline, and, showing down-at-heel boots of the elastic-sided variety that are called “jemimas,” her feet got shuffling to the steps of an old dance of the quarter. In the sunken hollows of the wan old face hovered the ghost of the set smile that dancers smile, baring toothless gums--the lights flickered but feebly in her lamp of life--she skipped the steps now right, now left, now back, now forward, with the stiff travesty of old age--and set the tables in a roar. A grotesque attempt at high-kicking brought down thunders of applause. The sous showered upon the floor.