and as it
had been raining for a month, I had not yet seen her, but I saw
immediately that she was a bad girl. At first I was very much shocked
and disgusted that she should be at the window like I was; and then, by
degrees, it amused me to examine her. She was resting her elbows on the
window ledge, and looking at the men, and the men looked at her also,
all or nearly all. One might have said that they were apprised
beforehand by some means as they got near the house, which they scented
as dogs scent game, for they suddenly raised their heads, and exchanged
a swift look with her, a freemason's look. Hers said: 'Will you?'

"Theirs replied: 'I have no time,' or else: 'another day;' or else: 'I
have not got a half penny;' or else: 'Will you hide yourself, you
wretch!'

"You cannot imagine how funny it was to see her carrying on such a piece
of work, though, after all, it is her regular business.

"Sometimes she shut the window suddenly, and I saw a gentleman go in.
She had caught him like a fisherman hooks a gudgeon. Then I looked at my
watch, and I found that they stopped from twelve to twenty minutes,
never longer. In the end she really infatuated me, the spider! And then
the creature is so ugly.

"I asked myself: How does she manage to make herself understood so
quickly, so well and so completely? Does she add a sign of the head or a
motion of the hands to her looks? And I took my opera-glasses to watch
her proceedings. Oh! they were very simple: first of all a glance, then
a smile, then a slight sign with the head, which meant: 'Are you coming
up?' But it was so slight, so vague, so discreet, that it required a
great deal of knack to succeed as she did. And I asked myself: 'I wonder
if I could do that little movement, from below upwards, which was at the
same time bold and pretty, as well as she does,' for her gesture was
very pretty.

"I went and tried it before the looking-glass, and, my dear, I did it
better than she, a great deal better! I was enchanted, and resumed my
place at the window.

"She caught nobody more then, poor girl, nobody. She certainly had no
luck. It must really be very terrible to earn one's bread in that way,
terrible and amusing occasionally, for really some of these men one
meets in the street are rather nice.

"After that they all came on my side of the road and none on hers; the
sun had turned. They came one after the other, young, old, dark, fair,
gray, white. I saw some who look