idea, my friend, of the pain that
overcame me on the way home through rain and snow, across a league of
icy-sheeted quays, without a hope left? Oh, to think that she not only
had not guessed my poverty, but believed me to be as wealthy as she was,
and likewise borne as softly over the rough ways of life! What failure
and deceit! It was no mere question of money now, but of the fate of all
that lay within me.

"I went at haphazard, going over the words of our strange conversation
with myself. I got so thoroughly lost in my reflections that I ended by
doubts as to the actual value of words and ideas. But I loved her
all the same; I loved this woman with the untouched heart that might
surrender at any moment--a woman who daily disappointed the expectations
of the previous evening, by appearing as a new mistress on the morrow.

"As I passed under the gateway of the Institute, a fevered thrill ran
through me. I remembered that I was fasting, and that I had not a penny.
To complete the measure of my misfortune, my hat was spoiled by the
rain. How was I to appear in the drawing-room of a woman of fashion with
an unpresentable hat? I had always cursed the inane and stupid custom
that compels us to exhibit the lining of our hats, and to keep them
always in our hands, but with anxious care I had so far kept mine in a
precarious state of efficiency. It had been neither strikingly new, nor
utterly shabby, neither napless nor over-glossy, and might have passed
for the hat of a frugally given owner, but its artificially prolonged
existence had now reached the final stage, it was crumpled, forlorn, and
completely ruined, a downright rag, a fitting emblem of its master. My
painfully preserved elegance must collapse for want of thirty sous.

"What unrecognized sacrifices I had made in the past three months for
Foedora! How often I had given the price of a week's sustenance to see
her for a moment! To leave my work and go without food was the least of
it! I must traverse the streets of Paris without getting splashed, run
to escape showers, and reach her rooms at last, as neat and spruce as
any of the coxcombs about her. For a poet and a distracted wooer the
difficulties of this task were endless. My happiness, the course of my
love, might be affected by a speck of mud upon my only white waistcoat!
Oh, to miss the sight of her because I was wet through and bedraggled,
and had not so much as five sous to give to a shoeblack for removing