<blockquote>Montparnasse had some time ago ceased listening to the old man, his words no different to her ears from those of the smug bourgeoisie who would have her toil to her death in miserable respectability, married to the sort of man who drank too much and struck his wife when he did, all her beauty lost to the needle and the washrooms. The same bourgeoisie who would spit on her if she took up that other trade for girls who grew up in the gutter, spit on her and then offer her a few sous in trade. No; idleness suited her far better. And if the price of her idleness was a few more bodies in the Père-Lachaise, what did it matter?</blockquote>