sciences; but she had fine,
strong limbs and the majestic carriage of a cardinal's mistress going
through the Rue de Constance in heavy brocade garments, to see Jean
Huss burned; and her voluptuous smile showed teeth made to devour
patrimonies. Unfortunately, Mademoiselle Rose de Juin's--that was the
young lady's theatrical name--charming head was full of the foolishness
and vanity of a poor actress. Her attacks of rage when she read an
article in the journals which cut her up, her nervous attacks and
torrents of tears when they gave her parts with only fifteen lines in a
new piece, had begun to annoy Amedee, when chance gave him a new rival
in the person of Gradoux, an actor in the Varietes, the ugly clown
whose chronic cold in the head and ugly face seemed for twenty years so
delicious to the most refined public in the world. Relieved of a large
number of bank-notes, Violette discreetly retired.

He next carried on a commonplace romance with a pretty little girl whose
acquaintance he made one evening at a public fete. Louison was twenty
years old, and earned her living at a famous florist's, and was as pink
and fresh as an almond-bush in April. She had had only two lovers, gay
fellows--an art student first--then a clerk in a novelty store, who had
given her the not very aristocratic taste for boating. It was on the
Marne, seated near Louison in a boat moored to the willows on the Ile
d'Amour, that Amedee obtained his first kiss between two stanzas of
a boating song, and this pretty creature, who never came to see
him without bringing him a bouquet, charmed the poet. He remembered
Beranger's charming verses, "I am of the people as well, my love!" felt
that he loved, and was softened. In reality, he had turned this naive
head. Louison became dreamy, asked for a lock of his hair, which she
always carried with her in her 'porte-monnaie', went to get her fortune
told to know whether the dark-complexioned young man, the knave of
clubs, would be faithful to her for a long time. Amedee trusted this
simple heart for some time, but at length he became tired of her
vulgarities. She was really too talkative, not minding her h's and
punctuating her discourse with "for certain" and "listen to me, then,"
calling Amedee "my little man," and eating vulgar dishes. One day she
offered to kiss him, with a breath that smelled of garlic. She was the
one who left him, from feminine pride, feeling that he no longer loved
her, and he almost r