without drops that deposits on your clothing
an imperceptible spray and soon covers you with a sort of iced foam that
chills you through.

What should I do? I walked in one direction and then came back, looking
for some place where I could spend two hours, and discovering for the
first time that there is no place of amusement in Paris in the evening.
At last I decided to go to the Folies-Bergere, that entertaining resort
for gay women.

There were very few people in the main hall. In the long horseshoe curve
there were only a few ordinary looking people, whose plebeian origin
was apparent in their manners, their clothes, the cut of their hair and
beard, their hats, their complexion. It was rarely that one saw
from time to time a man whom you suspected of having washed himself
thoroughly, and his whole make-up seemed to match. As for the women,
they were always the same, those frightful women you all know, ugly,
tired looking, drooping, and walking along in their lackadaisical
manner, with that air of foolish superciliousness which they assume, I
do not know why.

I thought to myself that, in truth, not one of those languid creatures,
greasy rather than fat, puffed out here and thin there, with the contour
of a monk and the lower extremities of a bow-legged snipe, was worth the
louis that they would get with great difficulty after asking five.

But all at once I saw a little creature whom I thought attractive, not
in her first youth, but fresh, comical and tantalizing. I stopped her,
and stupidly, without thinking, I made an appointment with her for that
night. I did not want to go back to my own home alone, all alone; I
preferred the company and the caresses of this hussy.

And I followed her. She lived in a great big house in the Rue des
Martyrs. The gas was already extinguished on the stairway. I ascended
the steps slowly, lighting a candle match every few seconds, stubbing my
foot against the steps, stumbling and angry as I followed the rustle of
the skirt ahead of me.

She stopped on the fourth floor, and having closed the outer door she
said:

"Then you will stay till to-morrow?"

"Why, yes. You know that that was the agreement."

"All right, my dear, I just wanted to know. Wait for me here a minute, I
will be right back."

And she left me in the darkness. I heard her shutting two doors and then
I thought I heard her talking. I was surprised and uneasy. The thought
that she had a protector staggered m