it 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 seemed as if it
disturbed me, as though something of the soul had remained in it. And
I put it back on the velvet, rusty from age, and pushed in the drawer,
closed the doors of the antique cabinet and went out for a walk to
meditate.

"I walked along, filled with sadness and also with unrest, that unrest
that one feels when in love. I felt as though I must have lived before,
as though I must have known this woman.

"And Villon's lines came to my mind like a sob:

Tell me where, and in what place
Is Flora, the beautiful Roman,
Hipparchia and Thais
Who was her cousin-german?

Echo answers in the breeze
O'er river and lake that blows,
Their beauty was above all praise,
But where are last year's snows?

The queen, white as lilies,
Who sang as sing the birds,
Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice,
Ermengarde, princess of Maine,
And Joan, the good Lorraine,
Burned by the English at Rouen,
Where are they, Virgin Queen?
And where are last year's snows?

"When I got home again I felt an irresistible longing to s