a practiced eye, without
knowing with what kind of a male she had to do. She was a fair-haired
woman, or rather a fair-haired girl, a fresh, quite fresh young creature,
whom you guessed to be rosy and plump under her swelling bodice. I talked
to her in that flattering and idiotic style which we always adopt with
girls of this sort; and as she was truly charming, the idea suddenly
occurred to me to take her with me--always with a view to celebrating my
fortieth year. It was neither a long nor difficult task. She was free,
she told me, for the past fortnight, and she forthwith accepted my
invitation to come and sup with me in the Halles when her work would be
finished.

"As I was afraid lest she might give me the slip--you never can tell what
may happen, or who may come into those drink-shops, or what wind may blow
into a woman's head--I remained there all the evening waiting for her.

"I, too, had been free for the past month or two, and watching this
pretty debutante of love going from table to table, I asked myself the
question whether it would not be worth my while to make a bargain with
her to live with me for some time. I am here relating to you one of those
ordinary adventures which occur every day in the lives of men in Paris.

"Excuse me for such gross details. Those who have not loved in a poetic
fashion take and choose women, as you choose a chop in a butcher's shop
without caring about anything save the quality of their flesh.

"Accordingly, I took her to her own house--for I had a regard for my own
sheets. It was a little working-girl's lodgings in the fifth story, clean
and poor, and I spent two delightful hours there. This little girl had a
certain grace and a rare attractiveness.

"When I was about to leave the room, I advanced towards the mantelpiece
in order to place there the stipulated present, after having agreed on a
day for a second meeting with the girl, who remained in bed, I got a
vague glimpse of a clock without a globe, two flower-vases and two
photographs, one of them very old, one of those proofs on glass called
daguerreo-types. I carelessly bent forward towards this portrait, and I
remained speechless at the sight, too amazed to comprehend.... It was my
own, the first portrait of myself, which I had got taken in the days when
I was a student in the Latin Quarter.

"I abruptly snatched it up to examine it more closely. I did not deceive
myself--and I felt a desire to burst out laughing,