nd I started off on
my search.

"I certainly found many poor girls, who were on the look-out for some
adventure, but they were ugly enough to give any man a fit of
indigestion, or thin enough to freeze as they stood if they had stopped,
and you all know that I have a weakness for stout women. The more flesh
they have, the better I like them, and a female colossus would drive me
out of my senses with pleasure.

"Suddenly, opposite the Theatre des Varietes, I saw a face to my liking.
A good head, and then two protuberances, that on the chest very
beautiful, and that on the stomach simply surprising; it was the stomach
of a fat goose. I trembled with pleasure, and said:

"'By Jove! What a fine girl!'

"It only remained for me to see her face. A woman's face is the dessert,
while the rest is ... the joint.

"I hastened on, and overtook her, and turned round suddenly under a gas
lamp. She was charming, quite young, dark, with large, black eyes, and
I immediately made my proposition, which she accepted without any
hesitation, and a quarter of an hour later, we were sitting at supper in
my lodgings. 'Oh! how comfortable it is here,' she said as she came in,
and she looked about her with evident satisfaction at having found a
supper and a bed, on that bitter night. She was superb; so beautiful that
she astonished me, and so stout that she fairly captivated me.

"She took off her cloak and hat, sat down and began to eat; but she
seemed in low spirits, and sometimes her pale face twitched as if she
were suffering from some hidden sorrow.

"'Have you anything troubling you?' I asked her.

"'Bah! Don't let us think of troubles!'

"And she began to drink. She emptied her champagne glass at a draught,
filled it again, and emptied it again, without stopping, and soon a
little color came into her cheeks, and she began to laugh.

"I adored her already, kissed her continually, and discovered that she
was neither stupid, nor common, nor coarse as ordinary street-walkers
are. I asked her for some details about her life, but she replied:

"'My little fellow, that is no business of yours!' Alas! an hour
later....

"At last it was time to go to bed, and while I was clearing the table,
which had been laid in front of the fire, she undressed herself quickly,
and got in. My neighbors were making a terrible din, singing and
laughing like lunatics, and so I said to myself:

"'I was quite right to go out and bring in this girl; I sh