Septimus she saw daily.

Now and then, if Septimus were known to be upstairs, Hegisippe Cruchot, coming to pay his filial respects to his mother and his mother's _bouillabaisse_ (she was from Marseilles) and her _matelote_ of eels, luxuries which his halfpenny a day could not provide, would mount to inquire dutifully after his aunt and incidentally after the _belle dame du troisieme_.

He was their only visitor from the outside world, and as he found a welcome and an ambrosial form of alcohol compounded of Scotch whiskey and Maraschino (whose subtlety Emmy had learned from an eminent London actor-manager at a far-away supper party), he came as often as his respectful ideas of propriety allowed.
They were quaint gatherings, these, in the stiffly furnished little salon: Emmy, fluffy-haired, sea-shell-cheeked, and softly raimented, lying indolently on the sofa amid a pile of cushions--she had sent Septimus out to "La Samaritaine" to buy some (in French furnished rooms they stuff the cushions with cement), and he had brought back a dozen in a cab, so that the whole room heaved and swelled with them; Septimus, with his mild blue eyes and upstanding hair, looking like the conventional picture of one who sees a ghost; Hegisippe Cruchot, the outrageousness of whose piratical kit contrasted with his suavity of manner, sitting with military precision on a straight-backed chair; and Madame Bolivard standing in a far corner of the room; her bare arms crossed above her blue apron, and watching the scene with an air of kindly proprietorship.

They spoke in French, for only one word of English had Hegisippe and his aunt between them, and that being "Howdodogoddam" was the exclusive possession of the former.

Emmy gave utterance now and then to peculiar vocables which she had learned at school, and which Hegisippe declared to be the purest Parisian he had ever heard an Englishwoman use, while Septimus spoke very fair French indeed.
Hegisippe would twirl his little brown mustache--he was all brown, skin and eyes and close-cropped hair, and even the skull under the hair--and tell of his military service and of the beautiful sunshine of Algiers and, when his aunt was out of the room, of his Arcadian love affairs.