, Pauline came to see me.

"'Perhaps your ten francs is not enough,' said the amiable, kind-hearted
girl; 'my mother told me to offer you this money. Take it, please, take
it!'

"She laid three crowns upon the table, and tried to escape, but I would
not let her go. Admiration dried the tears that sprang to my eyes.

"'You are an angel, Pauline,' I said. 'It is not the loan that touches
me so much as the delicacy with which it is offered. I used to wish for
a rich wife, a fashionable woman of rank; and now, alas! I would
rather possess millions, and find some girl, as poor as you are, with
a generous nature like your own; and I would renounce a fatal passion
which will kill me. Perhaps what you told me will come true.'

"'That is enough,' she said, and fled away; the fresh trills of her
birdlike voice rang up the staircase.

"'She is very happy in not yet knowing love,' I said to myself, thinking
of the torments I had endured for many months past.

"Pauline's fifteen francs were invaluable to me. Foedora, thinking of
the stifling odor of the crowded place where we were to spend several
hours, was sorry that she had not brought a bouquet; I went in search of
flowers for her, as I had laid already my life and my fate at her feet.
With a pleasure in which compunction mingled, I gave her a bouquet. I
learned from its price the extravagance of superficial gallantry in
the world. But very soon she complained of the heavy scent of a Mexican
jessamine. The interior of the theatre, the bare bench on which she
was to sit, filled her with intolerable disgust; she upbraided me for
bringing her there. Although she sat beside me, she wished to go, and
she went. I had spent sleepless nights, and squandered two months of
my life for her, and I could not please her. Never had that tormenting
spirit been more unfeeling or more fascinating.

"I sat beside her in the cramped back seat of the vehicle; all the way I
could feel her breath on me and the contact of her perfumed glove; I
saw distinctly all her exceeding beauty; I inhaled a vague scent of
orris-root; so wholly a woman she was, with no touch of womanhood. Just
then a sudden gleam of light lit up the depths of this mysterious life
for me. I thought all at once of a book just published by a poet,
a genuine conception of the artist, in the shape of the statue of
Polycletus.

"I seemed to see that monstrous creation, at one time an officer,
breaking in a spirited horse; at ano