“On the first night of a play, I was sitting in the stalls close to Lucy, whose mother had accompanied her, as usual, and they occupied the front of a box, side by side.  From some insurmountable attraction, I never ceased looking at the woman whom I loved with all the force of my being.  I feasted my eyes on her beauty, I saw nobody except her in the theater, and did not listen to the piece that was being performed on the stage.

“Suddenly, however, I felt as if I had received a blow from a dagger in my heart, and I had an insane hallucination.  Lucy had moved and her pretty head was in profile, in the same attitude and with the same lines as her mother.  I do not know what shadow, or what play of light had hardened and altered the color of her delicate features and destroyed their ideal prettiness, but the more I looked at them both, the one who was young, and the one who was old, the greater that distressing resemblance became.

“I saw Lucy growing older and older, striving against those accumulating years which bring wrinkles in the face, produce a double chin and crow’s feet, and spoil the mouth. They almost looked like twins.

“I suffered so that I almost thought I should have gone mad, and, in spite of myself, instead of shaking off this feeling and make my escape out of the theater, far away into the noise and life on the boulevards, I persisted in looking at the other, at the old one, in scanning her over, in judging her, in dissecting her with my eyes; I got excited over her flabby cheeks, over those ridiculous dimples, that were half-filled up, over that treble chin, that hair which must have been dyed, those eyes which had no more brightness in them, and that nose which was a caricature of Lucy’s beautiful, attractive little nose.

“I had the prescience of the future.  I loved her, and I should love her more and more every day, that little sorceress who had so despotically and so quickly conquered me.  I should not allow any participation or any intrigue from the day she gave herself to me, and when once we had been so intimately connected, who could tell whether, just as I was defending myself against it most, the legitimate termination—­marriage—­might not come?

“Why not give one’s name to a woman whom one loves, and of whom one is sure?  The reason was, that I should be tied to a disfigured, ugly creature with whom I should not venture to be seen in public, as my friends would leer at her with laughter in their eyes, and with pity in their hearts for the man who was accompanying those remains.”

* * * * *

“And so, as soon as the curtain had fallen, without saying good-day or good-evening, I had myself driven to the Moulin Rouge, and there I picked up the first woman I came across, and remained in her company until late next day.”

“Well,” Florise d’Anglet exclaimed, “I shall never take Mamma to the theater with me again, for men are really getting too mad!”