pressure of the crowd an officer stepped on my feet, swollen by the
new leather of my shoes as well as by the heat. This disgusted me with
the whole affair. It was impossible to get away; but I took refuge in
a corner of a room at the end of an empty bench, where I sat with
fixed eyes, motionless and sullen. Misled by my puny appearance, a
woman--taking me for a sleepy child--slid softly into the place beside
me, with the motion of a bird as she drops upon her nest. Instantly I
breathed the woman-atmosphere, which irradiated my soul as, in after
days, oriental poesy has shone there. I looked at my neighbor, and was
more dazzled by that vision than I had been by the scene of the fete.

If you have understood this history of my early life you will guess
the feelings which now welled up within me. My eyes rested suddenly
on white, rounded shoulders where I would fain have laid my head,
--shoulders faintly rosy, which seemed to blush as if uncovered for
the first time; modest shoulders, that possessed a soul, and reflected
light from their satin surface as from a silken texture. These
shoulders were parted by a line along which my eyes wandered. I raised
myself to see the bust and was spell-bound by the beauty of the bosom,
chastely covered with gauze, where blue-veined globes of perfect
outline were softly hidden in waves of lace. The slightest details of
the head were each and all enchantments which awakened infinite
delights within me; the brilliancy of the hair laid smoothly above a
neck as soft and velvety as a child's, the white lines drawn by the
comb where my imagination ran as along a dewy path,--all these things
put me, as it were, beside myself. Glancing round to be sure that no
one saw me, I threw myself upon those shoulders as a child upon the
breast of its mother, kissing them as I laid my head there. The woman
uttered a piercing cry, which the noise of the music drowned; she
turned, saw me, and exclaimed, "Monsieur!" Ah! had she said, "My