DOI article:
Harland, Henry: P'tit-Bleu
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27811#0078
P'tit-Bleu
74
would endure no exactions, no control or interference, no surveil-
lance, above all, no reproaches. Mercy, how angry she would
become if I ventured any, how hoighty-toighty and unap-
proachable.
" You imagine that I am your property ? Did you invent me ?
One would say you held a Government patent. All rights
reserved ! Thank you. You fancy perhaps that Paris is Con-
stantinople ? Ah, mais non ! "
She had a temper and a flow of language. There were
points you couldn't touch without precipitating hail and
lightning.
Thus my winter was far from a tranquil one, and before it
was half over I had three grey hairs. Honey and wormwood,
happiness and heartburn, reconciliations and frantic little tiffs,
carried us blithely on to Mi-Careme, when things reached a
crisis.
Mi-Careme fell midway in March that year : a velvety, sweet,
sunlit day, Spring stirring in her sleep. P'tit-Bleu and I had
spent the day together, in the crowded, crowded streets. We had
visited the Boulevards, of course, to watch the triumph of the
Queen of Washerwomen ; we had pelted everybody with confetti ;
and we had been pelted so profusely in return, that there were
confetti in our boots, in our pockets, down our necks, and
numberless confetti clung in the black meshes of P'tit-Bleu's hair,
like little pink, blue, and yellow stars. But all day long something
in P'tit-Bleu's manner, something in her voice, her smile, her
carriage, had obscurely troubled me ; something not easy to take
hold of, something elusive, unformulable, but disquieting. A
certain indefinite aloofness, perhaps; an accentuated independence;
as if she were preoccupied with secret thoughts, with intentions,
feelings, that she would not let me share.
And
74
would endure no exactions, no control or interference, no surveil-
lance, above all, no reproaches. Mercy, how angry she would
become if I ventured any, how hoighty-toighty and unap-
proachable.
" You imagine that I am your property ? Did you invent me ?
One would say you held a Government patent. All rights
reserved ! Thank you. You fancy perhaps that Paris is Con-
stantinople ? Ah, mais non ! "
She had a temper and a flow of language. There were
points you couldn't touch without precipitating hail and
lightning.
Thus my winter was far from a tranquil one, and before it
was half over I had three grey hairs. Honey and wormwood,
happiness and heartburn, reconciliations and frantic little tiffs,
carried us blithely on to Mi-Careme, when things reached a
crisis.
Mi-Careme fell midway in March that year : a velvety, sweet,
sunlit day, Spring stirring in her sleep. P'tit-Bleu and I had
spent the day together, in the crowded, crowded streets. We had
visited the Boulevards, of course, to watch the triumph of the
Queen of Washerwomen ; we had pelted everybody with confetti ;
and we had been pelted so profusely in return, that there were
confetti in our boots, in our pockets, down our necks, and
numberless confetti clung in the black meshes of P'tit-Bleu's hair,
like little pink, blue, and yellow stars. But all day long something
in P'tit-Bleu's manner, something in her voice, her smile, her
carriage, had obscurely troubled me ; something not easy to take
hold of, something elusive, unformulable, but disquieting. A
certain indefinite aloofness, perhaps; an accentuated independence;
as if she were preoccupied with secret thoughts, with intentions,
feelings, that she would not let me share.
And