THE GREY WIG



I


They both styled themselves "Madame," but only the younger of the old
ladies had been married. Madame Valière was still a _demoiselle_, but
as she drew towards sixty it had seemed more _convenable_ to possess
a mature label. Certainly Madame Dépine had no visible matrimonial
advantages over her fellow-lodger at the Hôtel des Tourterelles,
though in the symmetrical cemetery of Montparnasse (Section 22)
wreaths of glass beads testified to a copious domesticity in the far
past, and a newspaper picture of a _chasseur d'Afrique_ pinned over
her bed recalled--though only the uniform was the dead soldier's--the
son she had contributed to France's colonial empire. Practically it
was two old maids--or two lone widows--whose boots turned pointed toes
towards each other in the dark cranny of the rambling, fusty corridor
of the sky-floor. Madame Dépine was round, and grew dumpier with age;
"Madame" Valière was long, and grew slimmer. Otherwise their lives ran
parallel. For the true madame of the establishment you had to turn to
Madame la Propriétaire, with her buxom bookkeeper of a daughter and
her tame baggage-bearing husband. This full-blooded, jovial creature,
with her swart moustache, represented the only Parisian success of
three provincial lives, and, in her good-nature, had permitted her
decayed townswomen--at as low a rent as was compatible with
prudence--to shelter themselves under her roof and as near it as
possible. Her house being a profitable warren of American