e goes, whatever
one does. The dear recollection of it pursues you in the street, in
society, everywhere; and when you return home at night, before taking off
your gloves or your hat; you go and look at it with the tenderness of a
lover.

"Truly, for eight days I worshipped this piece of furniture. I opened its
doors and pulled out the drawers every few moments. I handled it with
rapture, with all the intense joy of possession.

"But one evening I surmised, while I was feeling the thickness of one of
the panels, that there must be a secret drawer in it: My heart began to
beat, and I spent the night trying to discover this secret cavity.

"I succeeded on the following day by driving a knife into a slit in the
wood. A panel slid back and I saw, spread out on a piece of black velvet,
a magnificent tress of hair.

"Yes, a woman's hair, an immense coil of fair hair, almost red, which
must have been cut off close to the head, tied with a golden cord.

"I stood amazed, trembling, confused. An almost imperceptible perfume, so
ancient that it seemed to be the spirit of a perfume, issued from this
mysterious drawer and this remarkable relic.

"I lifted it gently, almost reverently, and took it out of its hiding
place. It at once unwound in a golden shower that reached to the floor,
dense but light; soft and gleaming like the tail of a comet.

"A strange emotion filled me. What was this? When, how, why had this hair
been shut up in this drawer? What adventure, what tragedy did this
souvenir conceal? Who had cut it off? A lover on a day of farewell, a
husband on a day of revenge, or the one whose head it had graced on the
day of despair?

"Was it as she was about to take the veil that they had cast thither that
love dowry as a pledge to the world of the living? Was it when they were
going to nail down the coffin of the beautiful young corpse that the one
who had adored her had cut off her tresses, the only thing that he could
retain of her, the only living part of her body that would not suffer
decay, the only thing he could still love, and caress, and kiss in his
paroxysms of grief?

"Was it not strange that this tress should have remained as it was in
life, when not an atom of the body on which it grew was in existence?

"It fell over my fingers, tickled the skin with a singular caress, the
caress of a dead woman. It affected me so that I felt as though I should
weep.

"I held it in my hands for a long time, then it