In answer to my question, what he meant by going to the Quartier Breda
for a holiday, he said:

"I'll tell you all about that in the carriage."

But no sooner had we got into the carriage than he remembered that he
must leave word for a woman who had promised to sit to him, and
swearing that a message would not delay us for more than a few minutes
he directed the coachman. We were shown into a drawing-room, and the
lady ran out of her bedroom, wrapping herself as she ran in a
_peignoir_, and the sitting was discussed in the middle of a
polished _parquet_ floor. We at last returned to the carriage,
but we were hardly seated when he remembered another appointment. He
scribbled notes in the lodges of the _concierges_, and between
whiles told me all he knew of the story of Marie Pellegrin. This
delicate woman that I had felt could not be of the Montmartre kin was
the daughter of a _concierge_ on the Boulevard Exterieur. She had
run away from home at fifteen, had danced at the Elysee Montmartre.

Sa jupe avait des trous,
Elle aimait des voyous,
Ils ont des yeux si doux.

But one day a Russian prince had caught sight of her, and had built
her a palace in the Champs Elysees; but the Russian prince and his
palace bored her.

The stopping of the carriage interrupted Octave's narrative. "Here we
are," he said, seizing a bell hanging on a jangling wire, and the
green door in the crumbling wall opened, and I saw an undersized