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Her circumstances tend to make of her "a curious anomalous hybrid; a cross between a magnificent, rather unmannerly boy, and a spoiled, exacting demi-mondaine, who sincerely loves in this world herself alone." She has not yet learnt that woman's supreme work in the world can only be attained through the voluntary acceptance of the restraints of marriage.
"That is Clara, a newspaper girl. She brought the Figaro to me every morning. She had dimples in her cheeks, nests for kisses. One day I said to her: 'I will make your portrait. She came, one summer morning, with earrings and rings which she had bought at the Neuilly fair. I never saw her again. I do not know what has become of her. She was too instinctive to become a fashionable demi-mondaine.
She had all the instincts and habits of a demi-mondaine; moreover, she had been thrust into a position where she was expected to live up to traditions of great magnificence. Her passion for ornament had every temptation and excuse, for it was constantly excited by the hoards of greedy tradesmen and of no less greedy ladies-in-waiting who hung about her urging her to buy and give.
"Bon voyage!" croaked a little old woman, lifting her claw. She had borrowed five francs from the prisoner. "Au revoir!" laughed back Marianne, but the words were faint, for the last car was snaking around the bend. Thus Marianne went to jail. Now that she is back, she takes her return as carelessly and unblushingly as a demi-mondaine does her annual return from Dinard.
Ah! poor amico, how circumspect and repentant he had shown himself since that fit of brutal insanity! At first, to conceal his embarrassment, he had gone to spend three days at Naples, and it was said that La Tonietta, the sentimental demi-mondaine, had hastened to join him there, wildly in love with him.
All too soon, I fear, the railway to Tozeur will have done its work; dusty boulevards, white bungalows, eucalyptus trees and bureaux de monopoles will profane its strangely wonderful beauty, its virginal monotone of golden grey. Nefta will become a neurasthenic demi-mondaine, like Biskra. Such, at least, is the prognosis.
This bath of priceless metal he had procured, after much financial wrestling, from an auction, and he considered the purchase the culminating achievement of his wealth. No one knew exactly its origin; perhaps it had been the property of luxurious princes; perhaps it owed its existence to the caprice of a demi-mondaine fond of display.
Instantly the scene changed, crowds of friends gathered round our baron, who meanwhile had lost his head over a celebrated demi-mondaine; he even discovered some relations; moreover a number of young girls of high birth burned to be united to him in lawful matrimony. Could anyone possibly imagine a better match? Aristocrat, millionaire, and idiot, he has every advantage!
He had caught his foot clumsily on the dress of one above the town-hall, a dashing demi-mondaine with rouged cheeks and unnaturally bright eyes and a huge velvet-covered hat of the Gainsborough shape and had been covered with confusion when she turned sharply round on him with a "Now, clumsy, I'm not a door-mat."
Back and forth in front of me wandered humanity, all grades and shades. Here a prince, scion of a noble house, there a parvenu, fresh from his latest stock-jobbing victory. Here a mondaine, a demi-mondaine with a reputation in half a dozen countries. Here a group of famous lights of the stage, there a couple of eminent statesmen. Truly, a cosmopolitan crowd.
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