n everything. "The past is
buried," she said sweetly. "To you I bequeath my tatting!" With these
charitable words still hovering on her lips, she laid her head upon the
fatal block; from that trying position she threw the executioner a dumb
look. "Do your duty, my friend," she said, and shut her eyes and her
mouth.

Mastering his emotion with an effort, the headsman raised his axe;
through a mist of tears, it fell.

"LA BIBI"

[Illustration: "LA BIBI"

_From the pastel by Coddle_]

Hortense Poissons--"La Bibi," What memories that name conjures up! The
incomparable--the lightsome--the effervescent--her life a rose-coloured
smear across the history of France--her smile--tier upon tier of
sparkling teeth--her heart, that delicate organ for which kings fought
in the streets like common dukes--but enough; let us trace her to her
obscure parentage. You all know the Place de la Concorde--she was not
born there. You have all visited the Champs Elysees--she was not born
there. And there's probably no one who doesn't know of the Faubourg St.
Honore--but she was not born there. Sufficient to say that she was born.
Her mother, poor, honest, _gauche_, an unpretentious seamstress; she
seamed and seamed until her death in 1682 or 1683: Bibi, at the age of
ten, flung on to the world homeless, motherless, with nothing but her
amazing beauty between her and starvation or worse. Who can blame her
for what she did--who can question or condemn her motives? She was
alone. Then Armand Brochet (who shall be nameless) entered the panorama
of her career. What was she to do--refuse the roof he offered her? This
waif (later on to be the glory of France), this leaf blown hither and
thither by the winds of Destiny--what was she to do? Enough that she
did.

Paris, a city of seething vice and corruption--her home, the place
wherein she danced her first catoucha, that catoucha which was so soon
to be followed by her famous Japanese schottische, and later still by
her celebrated Peruvian minuet. Voltaire wrote a lot, but he didn't
mention her; Jean Jacques Rousseau scribbled hours, but never so much as
referred to her; even Moliere was so reticent on the subject of her
undoubted charms that no single word about her can be found in any of
his works.[29]

Her life with Armand Brochet (who shall still be nameless) three years
before she stepped on to the boards--how well we all know it! Her famous
epigram at the breakfast table: "Armand,