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For the moment, discounting the uniform which might have hidden a midinette or a duchess, she had nothing but the face and the gestures and the beautifully modulated voice to go upon, and between the accent of the midinette and the duchess both being equally charming to her English ear Peggy could not discriminate. She had, however, beautiful, capable hands, and took care of her finger-nails.
They copy no master, they follow no tradition; what they owe to the past and it is much they have borrowed quite unconsciously with the quality of their bodies and their minds from the history and traditional culture of their race. Their art differs from savage art as a French midinette differs from a squaw, but it is as original and vital as the work of savages.
Ponder a moment her singing in Thais. The converted Thais, about to betake herself desertward with the insistent monk, has a solo to sing. The solo is Massenet, simon-pure Massenet, the idol of the Paris midinette. Miss Garden, with a defective voice, a defective technique, exalts and magnifies that passage till it might be the noblest air of Handel or of Mozart.
"The spring will bring victory to France" was an article of faith which comforted the soul of the little midinette who sang on her way to the Rue Lafayette, and the French soldier who found a wild flower growing in his trench. I have written many words about the spirit of Paris in war. Yet all these little glimpses I have given reveal only the trivial characteristics of the city.
One side of its court was formed by a hill in which there were caves good shelter for the men. There was just one run that night to Corps H.Q. in a chateau three miles farther on. The morning was clear and sunny. A good, lazy breakfast preluded a great wash. Then we chatted discreetly with a Paris midinette at the gate of the farm.
These were the opening phrases of the preface, but those which followed were less easy to understand. Then came "Stark: A Conte," about a midinette who, so far as I could gather, murdered, or was about to murder, a mannequin. It was rather like a story by Catulle Mendes in which the translator had either skipped or cut out every alternate sentence. Next, a dialogue between Pan and St.
Mayer recognized the room as a familiar type he had been in many such in many lands. But the girl did not fit it. She looked to him very un-American, more like a Spaniard or a French midinette. There was nothing about her that suggested the stage, no make-up, none of its bold coquetry or crude allure. She was rather stiff and prim, watchful, he thought, and her face added to the impression.
For the midinette and the femme galante there seemed nothing to do. A paternal government had found occupation and pay for all other classes of women, also a franc and a half a day for the soldier's wife or mother, but the daughter of joy was left very joyless indeed, with the cold misery of a room from which she could not be evicted "pendant la guerre."
Parisians of every class, from the grande dame of the Faubourg Saint-Germain to the midinette of the Rue de la Paix, or the professional beauty of Montmartre, are subdued and chastened by the sudden change that overtook their bright and exuberant existence. During this first period of the war, Paris assumed the aspect of a Scottish Sabbath.
I am in a new world a world of chic femininity. My eyes devour the inimitable details of costume, the inexpressible nuances of pose, the indescribable demarche of the midinette. They hold themselves differently. They have even a little bold color here and there on skirt or blouse or hat. They are not talking about La Guerre. Incredible. They appear very beautiful, these Parisiennes.
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