to Paris for a day or two at a time, once a month say. Couldn't you persuade her to let me go back with you? She's the most awful screw, you know. It's the French lower middle class parsimony. I'm never allowed to have twopence in my pocket. Yet whose money is it? Where does it come from? I really can't think why I submit, why I don't break away from her, and follow my own wishes. But the poor little thing is fond of me; she's attached herself to me. I don't know what would become of her if I cast her off. Oh, don't fancy that I don't appreciate her. Her intentions are excellent. But she lacks wisdom, and she enjoys the exercise of power. I wish you'd speak with her."
P'tit-Bleu also drew me apart.
"Please don't call me P'tit-Bleu any more. Call me Jeanne. I have put all that behind me—all that P'tit-Bleu signifies. I hate to think of it, to be reminded of it. I should like to forget it."
When I had promised not to call her P'tit-Bleu any more, she went on, replying to my questions, to tell me of their life.
"Of course, everybody thinks I am his mistress. You can't convince them I'm not. But that's got to be endured. For the rest, all is going well. You see how he is improved. I give him fifteen drops of laudanum, morning, noon, and night. Fifteen drops—it is nothing. I could take it myself, and never know it. And he used to drink off an ounce—an ounce, mon cher—at a time, and then want more at the end of an hour. Yes! Oh, he complains, he complains of everything, he frets, he is not contented. But he has not walked twenty miles in bare feet, as you said he would. And he is working. You will see his pictures."
"And you—how do you pass your time? What do you do?"
"I pose
