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A little procession suddenly formed under the trees and came towards her, and Marie was presented with a great basket of flowers, and all her company with bouquets; and a little cheer went up from different parts of the bal, "Vive Marie Pellegrin, la reine de l'Elysee."
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.
Among the numerous friends my father had, I ought particularly to mention the families of Pellegrin, Darneville, Lamotte, Dubois, Artigue, Feuilletaine, Labouré, Valentin, Debonnet, Boucaline, Waterman, &c.: And in truth all the inhabitants of Senegal, if we except one family, were disposed to befriend us.
He said it was a pity he did not know me when he was writing it, for I could have told him her story more sympathetically than the women in the Rat Mort, supplying him with many pretty details that they had never noticed or had forgotten. It would have been easy for me to have done this, for Marie Pellegrin is enshrined in my memory like a miniature in a case.
It was when the soup-plates were being taken away that I saw a young woman dressed in black coming across the garden. It was she, Marie Pellegrin. She wore a dress similar to the one she wore in her portrait, a black silk covered with lace, and her black hair was swathed about her shapely little head. She was her portrait and something more.
On being questioned, he denied any knowledge of French; he said he had never been to St. Petersburg, nor did he wish to go there. And what was this story but the story of Marie Pellegrin, who, when weary of Russian princes and palaces, returned for her holiday to the Quartier Breda?
Here are his own books, "The End of Lucie Pellegrin," the story that I have just finished writing: I think I must explain how it was that I have come to rewrite one of Paul's stories, the best he ever wrote.
I press a spring, and I see the beautifully shaped little head, the pale olive face, the dark eyes, and the blue-black hair. Marie Pellegrin is really part of my own story, so why should I have any scruple about telling it? Merely because my friend had written it from hearsay? Whereas I knew her; I saw her on her death-bed. Chance made me her natural historian.
The dressmaker said that Madame Pellegrin would have her dress by nine, and at half-past ten I was at the Elysee waiting for her. How many times did I walk round the gravel path, wearying of the unnatural green of the chestnut leaves and of the high kicking in the quadrilles?
"I always sit over there under the trees in the angle," she said; and she was about to invite me to come and sit with her when her attention was distracted from me; for the people had drawn together into groups, and I heard everybody whispering: "That's Marie Pellegrin."
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