QUITE ALONE.

BOOK THE SECOND: WOMANHOOD.

CHAPTER XL. A DEAD AND GONE FESTIVAL.

WHEN poor little Lily reached the foot of the
common staircase, she found nobody there but
the portress, who was engaged in a more or
less amicable discussion with the Auvergnat in
a blouse, who, with the assistance of a donkey,
a cart, and several cans, was in the habit of
bringing round the milk to that particular street.
She had just informed the Auvergnat that he was
a fichue bête; to which he had responded, that
she the portress was a vieille sorcière, who was
born in the time of Pharamond, and had not
invented gunpowder. Thereupon Madame la
Concierge was about making an assault upon the
uncivil milkseller with her broom; but at this
conjuncture the postman fortunately entered the
lodge with the early batch of letters, and for ten
minutes or so the portress had quite enough
to do in examining the superscriptions, peeping
between the interstices of the envelopes, and
smelling the seals of the missives brought by the
Mercury of the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau.

"Pouah! comme ça pue le muse," she said,
nosing one delicate-looking billet. "Pink paper,
too, satiné! Allons donc! And a hand like a
spider out for a promenade, and all that for the
soi-disant vicomte, who has his varnished boots
mended, and owes two terms to our proprietor.
Ah, ah, my brave, if you don't have warning
before another month is over your head, my name
is not Cornélie Desgracq. II pleuvera des congés
dans cette maison. Why, how now, ma petite;
whither are you bound so early?"

This was to Lily, who had timidly asked for
the cordon.

"I am going for a walk—I am going to take
a bath."

Lily faltered. It is certain that nobody yet
ever did anything wrong in this world without
having to tell one or more falsehoods to
commence with. The embryo murderer has to tell
a lie about the pistol or dagger, the would-be
suicide about the poison he purchases. The ways
down which the bad ship Wickedness slides to
a shoreless ocean must be greased with lies.
Lily's criminality was of no very deep dye; yet
you see she had been unable to stir a pace in her
expedition without telling a fib.

"There you are, then," said the portress,
pulling the desired checkstring. "Go thy ways,
and a bright good morning to thee. I like that
petite ma'amselle," she continued, musing as
the girl slipped through the portal; "she gives
herself no airs, and, all things considered, is not
far from being pretty. Cela a un petit air de
rien du tout, qui n'est pas mal. Going to have
a bath, was she? Well, it's hot enough. I
wouldn't mind one myself if that pot-au-feu did
not demand my attention." Good old portress!
Since twenty years had she been pre-occupied
by that same pot-au-feu, perpetually simmering.
"Mais dites moi donc un peu, what on
earth makes all the girls in our time so very
anxious to take baths? Does that scélérat
Cupidon keep the baths of La Samaritaine, I
should like to know? When I was a girl, we
were not so fond of bathing."

And Madame la Concierge, having concluded
her examination of the postal delivery, proceeded
to skim her pot-au-feu.

Lily went out into the great desert: to her,
quite trackless, and barren of oases. She had
cast her skin, as it were. She had done with
her old friends, her old habits, the old-new
name with which they had invested her. She
was now only Lily, and Quite Alone.

Still, though she was solitary among a crowd of
thousands, and could not hope, between sunrise
and sundown, to light upon one friendly human
face she knew; though she was at sea, in a
frail cockboat, without mast or rudder or pilot
in a howling ocean, stretching she knew not
whither; though she had scarcely the means of
obtaining that night's shelter, or tomorrow's
bread, Lily was on business. She was
preoccupied. She had affairs of moment to attend
to. There never was, I conceive, any one so idle,
short of an idiot, who, if he chose to ask
himself the question, could not remember that he
had something to do. Lily was quite
overburdened with business. She had to get to
England: God alone knew how. She was to do
something there to earn her living: God alone knew
what. Oh! she was a fully-engaged and absorbed
young person; but, first of all, there was that
locket to be sold. Inexperienced in the ways of
the world as she was, she dared not flatter
herself that nineteen francs seventeen centimes
would take her to London. London! she had
scarcely pronounced that word as yet; but it
was fully settled in her minor consciousness that