Up to the day of Germain's arrest, Rigolette had had no sorrows but those
of others; she sympathized with all her flowers--devoted herself, body and
soul, to those who suffered--but thought no more about it when her back was
turned. Often she ceased from laughing to weep sincerely, and then she
ceased from weeping to laugh again. A true child of Paris--she preferred
noise to solitude, movement to repose the resounding harmony of the
orchestra at the Chartreuse or Coliseum balls, to the soft murmur of the
winds, the waters, and the foliage--the deafening noise of the streets of
Paris to the solitude of the country--the glare of fireworks, the glitter
of a ball, the noise of rockets, to the serenity of a fine night, with
stars and darkness and silence. Alas! yes; the good girl frankly preferred
the black mud of the streets of the capital to the verdure of the flowery
meadows--its dirty or scorching pavements to fresh and velvet moss of
wood-paths perfumed with violets--the suffocating dust of the barriers or
the boulevards to the waving of golden corn, enameled with the scarlet
flowers of the wild poppy and the azure of the bluebells. Rigolette only
left her room on Sundays--and each morning, to lay in her provision of
chickweed, bread, milk, and hempseed, for herself and her two birds, but
she lived in Paris for Paris' sake. She would have been in despair to have
lived elsewhere than in the capital.
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