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Madame Dépine had two drearier days than she had foreseen. She kept to her own room, creeping out only at night, when, like all cats, all wigs are grey. After an eternity of loneliness the third day dawned, and she went by pre-arrangement to meet the morning train. Ah, how gaily gleamed the kiosks on the boulevards through the grey mist! What jolly red faces glowed under the cabmen's white hats!
"But whom else?" replied Madame Dépine, impatiently, as she whipped off the "Princess's" wig. "If only it fits you, one can pardon him. Let us see. Stand still, ma chère," and with shaking hands she seized the grey wig. "But but " The "Princess" was gasping, coughing, her ridiculous scalp bare. "But stand still, then! What is the matter? Are you a little infant? Ah! that is better.
"I have kept this hotel for twenty years, I have grown grey in the service of artists and students, and this is the first time one has demanded dinner for one franc fifty!" "She has grown grey!" contemptuously muttered Madame Valière. "Grey? She!" repeated Madame Dépine, with no less bitterness. "It is only to give herself the air of a grande dame!"
They conversed with animation on the English in Egypt, and Madame Dépine recalled the gallant death of her son, the chasseur. The coiffeur saluted them amiably. Yes, mesdames, it was a beautiful morning. The wig was quite ready. Behold it there on its block. Madame Valière's eyes turned thither, then grew clouded, and returned to Madame Dépine's head and thence back to the Grey Wig.
"Then she will have cheated me out of the grey wig from the first," cried Madame Dépine, involuntarily. "And I who sacrificed myself to her!" "Comment! It was your wig?" "No, no." She flushed and stammered. "But enfin and then, oh, heaven! my brooch!" "She has stolen your brooch?" Great tears rolled down the wrinkled, ashen cheeks.
The coiffeur was at his door, sunning his aproned stomach, and twisting his moustache as if it were a customer's. Emotion overcame Madame Dépine at the sight of him. She pushed Madame Valière into the tobacconist's instead. "I have need of a stamp," she explained, and demanded one for five centimes. She leaned over the counter babbling aimlessly to the proprietor, postponing the great moment.
"At the expense of other people," Madame Dépine retorted bitterly. "I shall die of her cough, I am sure of it." Madame showed her white teeth sweetly. "Then it is you who should go to the hospital." Time wrote wrinkles enough on the brows of the two old ladies, but his frosty finger never touched their glossy brown hair, for both wore wigs of nearly the same shade.
Madame Dépine accepted in the same heroic spirit, and even suggested the elimination of the figs: one could lunch quite well on bread and milk, now the sunshine was here. But Madame Valière only agreed to a week's trial of this, for she had a sweet tooth among the few in her gums. The very next morning, as they walked in the Luxembourg Gardens, Madame Dépine's foot kicked against something.
"Without doubt, she gave you the idea. Quelle farceuse! I don't believe there ever was a Princess. The family was always inflated." All Madame Dépine's world seemed toppling. Somehow her own mistake added to her sense of having been exploited. "Still," said Madame la Propriétaire with a shrug, "it is only three weeks' rent." "If you lose it, I will pay!" Madame Dépine had an heroic burst of faith.
Madame Dépine yielded to the latter consideration; but as Madame Valière, carrying the bulging carpet-bag, was crying "La porte, s'il vous plaît" to the concierge, she heard Madame Dépine come tearing and puffing after her like the steam-tram, and, looking back, saw her breathlessly brandishing her gold brooch. "Tiens!" she panted, fastening the "Princess's" cloak with it.
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