Trilby. George du Maurier

      Then he went to Paris, and picked up a few English pupils there, and lost them, and earned a precarious livelihood from hand to mouth, anyhow, and sank from bad to worse.

      And when his worst was about reached, he married the famous tartaned and tam-o'-shantered barmaid at the Montagnards Ecossais, in the Rue du Paradis Poissonnière (a very fishy paradise indeed); she was a most beautiful Highland lassie of low degree, and she managed to support him, or helped him to support himself, for ten or fifteen years. Trilby was born to them, and was dragged up in some way—à la grâce de Dieu!

      Patrick O'Ferrall soon taught his wife to drown all care and responsibility in his own simple way, and opportunities for doing so were never lacking to her.

      Then he died, and left a posthumous child—born ten months after his death, alas! and whose birth cost its mother her life.

      Then Trilby became a blanchisseuse de fin, and in two or three years came to grief through her trust in a friend of her mother's. Then she became a model besides, and was able to support her little brother, whom she dearly loved.

      At the time this story begins, this small waif and stray was en pension with le pere Martin, the rag-picker, and his wife, the dealer in bric-a-brac and inexpensive old masters. They were very good people, and had grown fond of the child, who was beautiful to look at, and full of pretty tricks and pluck and cleverness—a popular favourite in the Rue du Puits d'Amour and its humble neighbourhood.

      Trilby, for some freak, always chose to speak of him as her godson, and as the grandchild of le père et la mere Martin, so that these good people had almost grown to believe he really belonged to them.

      And almost every one else believed that he was the child of Trilby (in spite of her youth), and she was so fond of him that she didn't mind in the least.

      He might have had a worse home.

      La mère Martin was pious, or pretended to be; le père Martin was the reverse. But they were equally good for their kind, and though coarse and ignorant and unscrupulous in many ways (as was natural enough), they were gifted in a very full measure with the saving graces of love and charity, especially he. And if people are to be judged by their works, this worthy pair are no doubt both equally well compensated by now for the trials and struggles of their sordid earthly life.

      So much for Trilby's parentage.

      And as she sat and wept at Madame Doche's impersonation of La Dame aux Caméllas (with her hand in Durien's) she vaguely remembered, as in a waking dream, now the noble presence of Taffy as he towered cool and erect, foil in hand, gallantly waiting for his adversary to breathe, now the beautiful sensitive face of Little Billee and his deferential courtesy.

      And during the entr'actes her heart went out in friendship to the jolly Scotch Laird of Cockpen, who came out now and then with such terrible French oaths and abominable expletives (and in the presence of ladies, too!), without the slightest notion of what they meant.

      For the Laird had a quick ear, and a craving to be colloquial and idiomatic before everything else, and made many awkward and embarrassing mistakes.

      It would be with him as though a polite Frenchman should say to a fair daughter of Albion, 'D—my eyes, mees, your tea is getting—cold; let me tell that good old—of a Jules to bring you another cup.'

      And so forth, till time and experience taught him better. It is perhaps well for him that his first experiments in conversational French were made in the unconventional circle of the Place St. Anatole des Arts.