hop of a dealer in
antiques a piece of Italian furniture of the seventeenth century. It was
very handsome, very rare. I set it down as being the work of a Venetian
artist named Vitelli, who was celebrated in his day.

"I went on my way.

"Why did the remembrance of that piece of furniture haunt me with such
insistence that I retraced my steps? I again stopped before the shop, in
order to take another look at it, and I felt that it tempted me.

"What a singular thing temptation is! One gazes at an object, and,
little by little, it charms you, it disturbs you, it fills your thoughts
as a woman's face might do. The enchantment of it penetrates your being,
a strange enchantment of form, color and appearance of an inanimate
object. And one loves it, one desires it, one wishes to have it. A
longing to own it takes possession of you, gently at first, as though it
were timid, but growing, becoming intense, irresistible.

"And the dealers seem to guess, from your ardent gaze, your secret and
increasing longing.

"I bought this piece of furniture and had it sent home at once. I placed
it in my room.

"Oh, I am sorry for those who do not know the honeymoon of the collector
with the antique he has just purchased. One looks at it tenderly and
passes one's hand over it as if it were human flesh; one comes back
to it every moment, one is always thinking of it, wherever ore 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 spir