Female friendship -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Paris (France) -- Fiction; Women -- Fiction
In appearance Martha was small and rather plain; and no one would have
noticed her, perhaps, but for the concentration of expression on her
face as she looked out of the carriage window on her way to her atelier
in the Latin Quarter. The people abroad at that hour were not of a class
to pay much attention to such a look on a girl’s face. The little army
of street-cleaners, occupying their brief hour with busy industry to
produce the beautiful effect of gay cleanliness which the world enjoyed
later in the day, had no time to notice Martha, and she was as unaware
of them. Even the ice on the figures in the fountains of the Place de la
Concorde, which she generally admired in passing, she did not so much as
see to-day. The “cold sea-maidens” wore an unusually beautiful veil of
mist, made by the freezing spray, and Martha might have got an
impression for some future picture if she had studied it with the early
sunlight on it.
But she was thinking only of the princess as she drove along and crossed
the bridge and entered old Paris. Here, too, all was familiar, for
Martha had taken this drive daily for months, and there was nothing to
disturb her preoccupation until she reached the Invalides, where her
hero-worshiping soul never failed to offer a passing tribute of awe to
the ashes of Napoleon.
As she turned into a cross street farther on, a little funeral
procession met her. This sight, too, was familiar; but no wont and usage
could keep Martha from being deeply moved as often as she witnessed the
pitiful little ceremonial which attends the burial of the very poor in
Paris.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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