her house or at mine, in making the
round of the cheap cafes, like students out for a lark.

We would go into the common drinking places and take our seats at the end
of the smoky den on two rickety chairs, at an old wooden table. A cloud
of pungent smoke, with which blended an odor of fried fish from dinner,
filled the room. Men in smocks were talking in loud tones as they drank
their petits verres, and the astonished waiter placed before us two
cherry brandies.

She, trembling, charmingly afraid, would raise her double black veil as
far as her nose, and then take up her glass with the enjoyment that one
feels at doing something delightfully naughty. Each cherry she swallowed
made her feel as if she had done something wrong, each swallow of the
burning liquor had on her the affect of a delicate and forbidden
enjoyment.

Then she would say to me in a low tone: "Let us go." And we would leave,
she walking quickly with lowered head between the drinkers who watched
her going by with a look of displeasure. And as soon as we got into the
street she would give a great sigh of relief, as if we had escaped some
terrible danger.

Sometimes she would ask me with a shudder:

"Suppose they, should say something rude to me in those places, what
would you do?" "Why, I would defend you, parbleu!" I would reply in a
resolute manner. And she would squeeze my arm for happiness, perhaps with
a vague wish that she might be insulted and protected, that she might see
men fight on her account, even those men, with me!

One evening as we sat at a table in a tavern at Montmartre, we saw an old
woman in tattered garments come in, holding in her hand a pack of dirty
cards. Perceiving a lady, the old woman at once approached us and offered
to tell my friend's fortune. Emma, who in her heart believed in
everything, was trembling with longing and anxiety, and she made a place
beside her for the old woman.

The latter, old, wrinkled, her eyes with red inflamed rings round them,
and her mouth without a single tooth in it, began to deal her dirty cards
on the table. She dealt them in piles, then gathered them up, and then
dealt them out again, murmuring indistinguishable words. Emma, turning
pale, listened with bated breath, gasping with anxiety and curiosity.

The fortune-teller broke silence. She predicted vague happenings:
happiness and children, a fair young man, a voyage, money, a lawsuit, a
dark man, the return of some one, success, a de