woman--I saw Alphonsine! And her portrait, a life-sized caricature
drawn by Octave, faced me from the white-washed wall of the hen-coop.
He had drawn her two cats purring about her legs, and had written
under it, "Ils viennent apres le mou." Her garden was a gravelled
space; I think there was one tree in it. A tent had been stretched
from wall to wall; and a seedy-looking waiter laid the tables (there
were two), placing bottles of wine in front of each knife and fork,
and bread in long sticks at regular intervals. He was constantly
disturbed by the ringing of the bell, and had to run to the door to
admit the company. Here and there I recognised faces that I had
already seen in the studio; Clementine, who last year was studying the
part of Elsa and this year was singing, "La femme de feu, la cui, la
cui, la cuisiniere," in a _cafe chantant_; and Margaret Byron,
who had just retreated from Russia--a disastrous campaign hers was
said to have been. The greater number were _hors concours_, for
Alphonsine's was to the aged courtesan what Chelsea Hospital is to the
aged soldier. It was a sort of human garden full of the sound and
colour of October.

I scrutinised the crowd. How could any one of these women interest the
woman whose portrait I had seen in Barres's studio? That one, for
instance, whom I saw every morning in the Rue des Martyres, in a
greasy _peignoir_, going marketing, a basket on her arm. Search
as I would I could not find a friend for Marie among the women nor a
lover among the men--neither of those two stout middle-aged men with
large whiskers, who had probably once been stockbrokers, nor the
withered journalist whom I heard speaking to Octave about a duel he
had fought recently; nor the little sandy Scotchman whose French was
not understood by the women and whose English was nearly
unintelligible to me; nor the man who looked like a head-waiter--