On the morrow, about ten o’clock in the evening, we all five again found ourselves at Paul’s, four of us with opera-glasses in our pockets.  As on the previous evening, the fair songstress sat down at her piano, then proceeded slowly to make her night toilette.  There was the same grace, the same charm, but when we came to the fatal moment at which on the preceding night the candle had gone out, a faint thrill ran through us all.  To tell the truth, for my part, I was nervous.  Heaven, very fortunately, was now on our side; the candle continued to burn.  The young woman then, with her charming hand, the plump outlines of which we could easily distinguish, smoothed the pillow, patted it, arranged it with a thousand caressing precautions in which the thought was suggested, “With what happiness shall I now go and bury my head in it!”

Then she smoothed down the little wrinkles in the bed, the contact with which might have irritated her, and, raising herself on her right arm, like a horseman, about to get into the saddle, we saw her left knee, smooth and shining as marble, slowly bury itself.  We seemed to hear a kind of creaking, but this creaking sounded joyful.  The sight was brief, too brief, alas! and it was in a species of delightful confusion that we perceived a well-rounded limb, dazzlingly white, struggling in the silk of the quilt.  At length everything became quiet again, and it was as much as we could do to make out a smooth, rose-tinted little foot which, not being sleepy, still lingered outside and fidgeted with the silken covering.

Delightful souvenir of my lively youth!  My pen splutters, my paper seems to blush to the color of that used by the orange-sellers.  I believe I have said too much.

I learned some time afterward that my friend De K. was about to be married, and, singularly enough, was going to wed this beautiful creature with whom I was so well acquainted.

“A charming woman!” I exclaimed one day.

“You know her, then?” said someone.

“I?  No, not the least in the world.”

“But?”

“Yes-no, let me see; I have seen her once at high mass.”

“She is not very pretty,” some one remarked to me.

“No, not her face,” I rejoined, and added to myself, “No, not her face, but all the rest!”

It is none the less true that for some time past this secret has been oppressing me, and, though I decided to-day to reveal it to you, it was because it seems to me that to do so would quiet my conscience.

But, for Heaven’s sake, let me entreat you, do not noise abroad the affair!

CHAPTER IV

SOUVENIRS OF LENT

The faithful are flocking up the steps of the temple; spring toilettes already glitter in the sun; trains sweep the dust with their long flowing folds; feathers and ribbons flutter; the bell chimes solemnly, while carriages keep arriving at a trot, depositing upon the pavement all that is most pious and most noble in the Faubourg, then draw up in line at the farther end of the square.