Read "The Sprightly Romance of Marsac" by Molly Elliot Seawell online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Madame Schmid, round and red, with the spotless lappets of her washerwoman's cap flapping angrily, was plainly in a rage; and the three loud whacks she gave at the garret door of 17 Rue Montignal caused two young gentlemen on the other side of the door to quake visibly. One of them, Fontaine, ran incontinently into a closet and hid, while Marsac, the other, after a ghastly pretence of a joke about Madame Schmid's whacks sounding like the three given at the Comédie Francaise before the curtain goes up, stalked with dignity to a corridor door. But, Madame Schmid bouncing in suddenly, Marsac as suddenly whisked out of sight.
Madame Schmid was of that coarse, buxom beauty common enough in her class. She had one year been elected queen of the washer-women, in that picturesque festival peculiar to Paris, and it had been said that fear of her stout arm and robust tongue had some share in her election. But she had a good heart, along with her vile temper; and as she planted her basket viciously on the floor, and whipped out a tremendously long bill, her quick eye took in the poverty of the surroundings, and she was softened in spite of herself. However, as one whistles going through a graveyard, so Madame Schmid always stormed the more when her excellent heart prevented her from taking stronger measures.