strange color of her hair, and the pale gray of her eyes. Oh! what a
fine, pretty, charming creature she was, this frail Baronne, the wife
of that, gouty, pimply Baron, who had abruptly carried her off to the
provinces, shut her up, kept her apart through jealousy, through
jealousy of the handsome Lormerin.

Yes, he had loved her, and he believed that he, too, had been truly
loved. She familiarly gave him the name of Jaquelet, and she used to
pronounce that word in an exquisite fashion.

A thousand memories that had been effaced came back to him, far off
and sweet and melancholy now. One evening, she called on him on her
way home from a ball, and they went out for a stroll in the Bois de
Boulogne, she in evening dress, he in his dressing-jacket. It was
springtime; the weather was beautiful. The odor of her bodice embalmed
the warm air--the odor of her bodice, and also a little, the odor of
her skin. What a divine night! When they reached the lake, as the
moon's rays fell across the branches into the water, she began to
weep. A little surprised, he asked her why.

She replied:

"I don't know. 'Tis the moon and the water that have affected me.
Every time I see poetic things, they seize hold of my heart, and I
have to cry."

He smiled, moved himself, considering her feminine emotion
charming--the emotion of a poor little woman whom every sensation
overwhelms. And he embraced her passionately, stammering:

"My little Lise, you are exquisite."

What a charming love affair short-lived and dainty it had been, and
all over too so quickly, cut short in the midst of its ardor by this
old brute of a Baron, who had carried off his wife, and never shown
her afterwards to anyone!

Lormerin had forgotten, in good sooth, at the end of two or three
months. One woman drives out the other so quickly in Paris when one is
a bachelor! No matter he had kept a little chapel for her in his
heart, for he had loved her alone! He assured himself now that this
was so.

He rose up, and said: "Certainly, I will go and dine with her this
evening!"

And instinctively he turned round towards the glass in order to
inspect himself from head to foot. He reflected: "She must have grown
old unpleasantly, more than I have!" And he felt gratified at the
thought of showing himself to her still handsome, still fresh, of
astonishing her, perhaps of filling her with emotion, and making her
regret those bygone days so far, far distant!

He turned