The two young women managed to comfort the dis- consolate mother; and Suzanne, who was an artist, strangely enough, like the dead Paul, told the elder Madame Grappe that if she had a photograph of her deceased son, she would paint a portrait of him in oils for her.
The poor mother was delighted, gave Suzanne a photo- graph and particulars of the colour of Paul's eyes and hair, which his widow supplemented, and in due course Suzanne presented her with a really striking portrait of the deceased Paul, to his mother's great delight.
Old madame Grappe was deeply religious, and when she found that her daughter-in-law and Suzanne went to live in a somewhat dubious neighborhood in the Quartier Latin, where they took a studio, she expressed rather forcibly her dis- pleasure at the gay life they were living, quarrelled, ceased to visit them, and died shortly before the Armistice.
Paul's widow and her friend Suzanne paid for her funeral, and on her gravestone was inscribed, by her wish: "MARIE JEANETTE GRAPPE, Whose only son, Corporal Grappe, died for France, 1916, R.I.P."
The Armistice brought rejoicings to Paris as it did to London and every city practically in the world. Montmartre resumed its reputation for boisterous gaiety which not even the war had succeeded in dimming, and the fame of the young painter in oils, La Belle Suzanne, and the handsome young wi- dow Grappe, was known far and wide over the Bohemian circles of Paris.
Suzanne became known as "The Breaker of Hearts," because although she participated in wild flirtation, she in- variably, after accepting jewels and expensive presents from her many admirers, she invariably turned down all overtures and offers of marriage.
IN the meantime, she made a good deal of money by paintings of a riaque nature. So things went on for ten years. La Belle Suzanne remained apparently unchanged and unwithered by time, like Cleopatra, despite her somewhat dissolute nights, spent in dancing and drinking; but her friend the widow Grappe, though still nice looking, began to show traces of age.
Then the French Government announced a general am- nesty for military offenses. On the day that it was proclaimed,
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