f myself, instead of shaking off this feeling and make my escape
out of the theater, far away into the noise and life on the boulevards,
I persisted in looking at the other, at the old one, in scanning her
over, in judging her, in dissecting her with my eyes; I got excited over
her flabby cheeks, over those ridiculous dimples, that were half-filled
up, over that treble chin, that hair which must have been dyed, those
eyes which had no more brightness in them, and that nose which was a
caricature of Lucy's beautiful, attractive little nose.

"I had the prescience of the future. I loved her, and I should love her
more and more every day, that little sorceress who had so despotically
and so quickly conquered me. I should not allow any participation or any
intrigue from the day she gave herself to me, and when once we had been
so intimately connected, who could tell whether, just as I was defending
myself against it most, the legitimate termination--marriage--might not
come?

"Why not give one's name to a woman whom one loves, and of whom one is
sure? The reason was, that I should be tied to a disfigured, ugly
creature with whom I should not venture to be seen in public, as my
friends would leer at her with laughter in their eyes, and with pity in
their hearts for the man who was accompanying those remains."

* * * * *

"And so, as soon as the curtain had fallen, without saying good-day or
good-evening, I had myself driven to the _Moulin Rouge_, and there I
picked up the first woman I came across, and remained in her company
until late next day."

"Well," Florise d'Anglet exclaimed, "I shall never take Mamma to the
theater with me again, for men are really getting too mad!"

THE NEW SENSATION

That little Madame d'Ormonde certainly had the devil in her, but above
all, a fantastic, baffling brain, through which the most unheard of
caprices passed, in which ideas danced and jostled each other, like
those pieces of different colored glass in a kaleidoscope, which form
such strange figures when they have been shaken, in which _Parisine_ was
fermenting to such an extent--you know, _Parisine_, the analysis of
which Roqueplan lately gave--that the most learned members of _The
Institute_ would have wasted his science and his wisdom if he had tried
to follow her slips and her subterfuges.

That was, very likely, the reason why she attracted, retained and
infatuated even those who had p