to Miss Olga..."
(1) The name is Rosine, not "Rosina," as it appeared in the last issue. We apologize to Howayek.
A few steps along the "Boulevard Raspail" I caught sight of Rosine walking the same way. I noticed her linger a little before a shoe shop, then approach an old woman sitting on a bench beside the road and place alms in her hand. A young man passed her and whispered something in her ear; she recoiled from him and quickened her step as far as the crossing... By then I had come up close to her, and I addressed her in Italian: "Where are you going? Give me your hand and I'll help you across..." She started at first, but when she recognized me she felt at ease and gave me her hand quite simply, saying: "I'm going to near the 'Montsouris' garden... half an hour on foot. Goodness! And where are you going?"
— To Madame Baudet's restaurant, there at the corner of the street. Is anyone expecting you?
— No...
— And will you accept my invitation?
— With pleasure. I'm dying of hunger!
At the table the knot of her tongue came undone, and she recounted her story to me. She told me that her family lives in the village of "Anticoli" in Italy, and that she began her working life going in winter to Rome to sit before the artists. Then she was told that the field of work in Paris was wider, so she came with her three brothers, builders by trade... Here she choked on her words and said:
— "If only I had never come to Paris! I am a stranger in it — no mother, no sister, no..." And she choked again...
— And your brothers?..
— "My brothers are always at their work. And besides, they are hard on me; they don't understand me, and they take from me everything I earn!" And her tears rolled down her cheeks...
— And do you always manage to find work, when the Parisian girls are so many?
— I have found no difficulty at all... Whenever I sit at the Academy, plenty of work is offered me. But I only agree if I like the artist's head!!..
I wanted to lighten her gloom, so I asked her with a smile:
— And how did you find my head, and Gibran's?
But she did not answer my flat question, and went on with her story:
— And when I find no work, the door of the mocking old man, "the Satyr," is always open!
— The old Satyr?
— Yes. The master "Rodin"!!
I gasped on hearing the name and said to Rosine, cautioning her gently:
— The master Rodin is the dean of artists, Mademoiselle. Why do you call him "the Satyr"?!
She smiled and answered:
— When I went to his studio the first time with a girlfriend of mine, he came up to me, felt my shoulders and my breast, and asked me — laughing, with his beard, like "a Satyr" — whether I was still a virgin!! I made to run away, feeling insulted... but he stopped me, laughing all the while "with his beard"!!
— And after that?
— After that, there were three nude girls in his studio, playing and laughing. "Do as they do," the master Rodin told us. "And eat what chocolate you please!!" He showed us a full box on the table, and he sat drawing while we played and ate chocolate, not knowing which of us he was drawing!! And from time to time he would call to us to move, and not stay stock-still...
I said to Rosine: — These drawings, Mademoiselle, the lovers of art race one another to buy at high prices, and they have begun to take pride of place in the museums!...
Rosine shrugged her shoulders indifferently and went on with her story:
— And once there came to him "one" like the one who came to your friend. On her head a great bonnet with flowers and a bird in it, wearing a long dress whose train she held up in her hand... and high-heeled shoes... She spoke in a language I didn't understand, and at once Rodin got up, paid each of us five francs, and we went off home...
— Rodin is a great artist, and a rich one, I told her; his works bring him a great deal of money.
And to change the subject I asked Rosine whether she was good at dancing and singing. Her eyes lit up and she answered with a naive, childlike joy:
— My friend Marguerite and I have begun learning the "rhythmic" dance with the pupils of "Isadora," in the hope that we may manage to reach the stage.