near the edge of a walk where the crowd passed
and repassed. They had been there about ten minutes when two women
stopped before them.

"Good-day, Maurice," said the taller, a brunette with rich coloring, the
genuine type of a tavern girl.

"What, Margot!" exclaimed the young man. "Will you take something?
Sit down a moment, and your friend too. Do you know, your friend is
charming? What is her name?"

"Rosine," replied the stranger, modestly, for she was only about
eighteen, and, in spite of the blond frizzles over her eyes, she was not
yet bold, poor child! She was making her debut, it was easy to see.

"Well, Mademoiselle Rosine, come here, that I may see you," continued
Maurice, seating the young girl beside him with a caressing gesture.
"You, Margot, I authorize to be unfaithful to me once more in favor of
my friend Amedee. He is suffering with lovesickness, and has a heart
to let. Although he is a poet, I think he happens to have in his pocket
enough to pay for a supper."

Everywhere and always the same, the egotistical and amiable Maurice
takes the lion's share, and Amedee, listening only with one ear to the
large Margot, who is already begging him to make an acrostic for her,
thinks Rosine is charming, while Maurice says a thousand foolish
things to her. In spite of himself, the poet looks upon Maurice as
his superior, and thinks it perfectly natural that he should claim the
prettier of the two women. No matter! Amedee wanted to enjoy himself
too. This Margot, who had just taken off her gloves to drink her wine,
had large, red hands, and seemed as silly as a goose, but all the same
she was a beautiful creature, and the poet began to talk to her, while
she laughed and looked at him with a wanton's eyes. Meanwhile the
orchestra burst into a polka, and Maurice, in raising his voice to speak
to his friend, called him several times Amedee, and once only by his
family name, Violette. Suddenly little Rosine started up and looked at
the poet, saying with astonishment:

"What! Is your name Amedee Violette?"

"Certainly."

"Then you are the boy with whom I played so much when I was a child."

"With me?"

"Yes! Do you not remember Rosine, little Rosine Combarieu, at Madame
Gerard's, the engraver's wife, in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs? We
played games with his little girls. How odd it is, the way one meets old
friends!"

What is it that Amedee feels? His entire childhood rises before him.
The bitterness of