the _Bois de Boulogne_, or at
their dressmakers!"

"'Bah! Just pick up the first girl you meet on the pavement.'

"And before the hour was up, I was bolting the door of a room, which
looked out onto the boulevard.

"The woman whom I had picked up, as she was walking past the _cafes_,
from the _Vaudeville_ to _Tortoni's_, was twenty at the most. She had an
impudent, snub nose, as if it had been turned up in fun by a fillip,
large eyes with-deep rims round them; her lips were too red, and she had
the slow, indolent walk of a girl who goes in for debauchery too freely
and who began too soon, but she was pretty, and her linen was very clean
and neat. And she was evidently used to chance love-making, and had a
way of undressing herself in two or three rapid movements, of throwing
her toggery to the right and left, until she was extremely lightly clad,
and of throwing herself onto the bed which astonished me as a sight that
was well worth seeing.

"She did not talk much, though she began by saying: 'Pay up at once, old
man ... You don't look like a fellow who would bilk a girl, but it puts
me into better trim when I have been paid.'

"I gave her two napoleons, and she eyed me with gratitude and respect at
the same time, but also with that uneasy look of a girl who asks
herself: 'What does this tool expect for it?'

"The whole affair began to amuse me, and I must confess that I was
rather taken with her, for she had a beautiful figure and complexion,
and I was hoping that the Commissary would not come directly, when there
was a loud rapping at the door.

"She sat up with a start, and grew so pale that one would have said she
was about to faint.

"'What a set of pigs, to come and interrupt people like this!' she
muttered between her teeth; while I affected the most complete calm.

"'Somebody who has made a mistake in the room, my dear,' I said.

"But this noise increased, and suddenly I heard a man's voice saying
clearly and authoritatively:

"'Open the door, in the name of the law!'

"On hearing that, one would have thought that she had received a shock
from an electric battery, by the nimble manner in which she jumped out
of bed; and quickly putting on her stays and her dress anyhow, she
endeavored to discover a way out in every corner of the room, like a
wild beast, trying to escape from its cage. I thought that she was going
to throw herself out of the window, so I seized hold of her to prevent
her.

"The