There, on every side, sharp-faced and shrill-voiced dealers haggle with timid customers over garments more or less decayed.  There the adroit thief finds a ready market for the various articles he has procured from chamber and entry, or purloined from the pockets of the unwary.  There the petted lady’s maid disposes of the rich robe which her careless mistress has given her, and the Parisian grisette, with the money her nimble fingers have earned, purchases it to adorn her neat and pretty form for the Bal pare et masque, to which her lover takes her, at Belleville or Montmartre.  In yonder stall hangs a tattered coat which once belonged to a marquis, but has gone through so many hands since then, and accumulated so much dirt and grease in the process, that one wonders how the dealer would have ventured to advance the few sous which its last wretched owner had raised upon it.

In this place I exchanged, without much difficulty, my female habiliments for a suit of respectable masculine attire.  I took it home, and with a feeling of shame of which I could not get rid, but yet with unflinching resolution, arrayed myself in it.  As a woman I know I am not handsome; my mouth is large and my skin dark; but this rather favored my disguise; for had I been very pretty, my beardless face and weak voice might have awakened more suspicion.  I cut my hair off short, parted it at one side, brushed it with great care, and crowned it with a jaunty cap, which, I must say, was very becoming to me.  In this dress I appeared a tolerably well-looking youth of nineteen or thereabout, for the change of garments made me look younger than I was.

As I surveyed myself in the little cracked looking-glass which served me as a mirror, I could not forbear laughing at the transformation.  Certainly no one would have recognized me, for I could scarcely recognize myself.

Folding the old cloak around me, I sallied forth.  With the long, thick braid of hair I had cut from my head, I purchased a breakfast, the best I had eaten in a long time.

Then I went direct to the residence of the gentleman who had said I would suit him exactly, if I were a young man.  There had been something in the tone of this gentleman’s letter that attracted me, I could not tell why.  To my great joy, he had not yet found the person he wanted; and after a short conversation he engaged me, at what seemed to me a princely salary.

He told me laughingly that a young woman had applied for the situation a short time previous; and seemed very much amused at the circumstance.

My employer was a man already past his prime.  His hair was slightly sprinkled with gray, and his form showed that tendency to fullness so frequently found in persons of sedentary habits.  But in his fine, thoughtful eyes, and expansive brow, one saw evidence of that noble intellect for which he was distinguished, while his beaming smile and pleasant voice showed a genial and benevolent heart.  The kindness of his voice and manner went straight to my lonely and desolate heart, and affected me so much that I almost disgraced my manhood by bursting into tears.