This is the best period of the day. I am warm and half asleep. My flesh is satisfied, my mind strays gently through that beautiful land of partial slumber in which life has all the pleasures of death. Then, sometimes, when I am completely awakened, I abandon myself to the sway of some dream. Brothers, what a child my poor heart must be that I can still lie to it! Ah! yes, I dream constantly, I yet have that strange power of escaping from reality, of creating from its wrecks a better world and better beings. There, between two dirty sheets, in the immediate vicinity of a woman hideous and wretched in her degradation, in the midst of a gloomy chamber, I often see a palace, all marble and silver, and a spotless, beautiful sweetheart, who stretches out her arms to me and summons me to quit my miserable retreat and its shameful surroundings. Eleven o'clock strikes and I leap from bed. The damp cold of the floor, which suddenly chills the soles of my feet, draws me from my dream. I shiver and dress myself. Then I walk about the room, going from the window to the door, glancing at the wall which bounds my horizon, and returning to stare at Laurence without seeing her. I smoke, yawn and try to read. I am cold and weary. Laurence awakes. Then begins the chapter of suffering. We must eat. We talk the matter over. We search the chamber for some object to sell. Often we give up the idea of breakfasting, when the problem is too difficult to solve and all is said. When we have happened to find some old rag, some piece of paper, no matter what, Laurence dresses herself and goes to offer the deplorable merchandise to a second-hand dealer, who gives her eight or ten sous. She brings back bread and a little pork which we eat as we stand, without talking to each other. The days are long for the wretched. When it is too cold and we have no fire, I go to bed again. When the weather is milder I strive to toil, giving myself a fever in trying to carry on work which does not desire me any longer. Laurence throws herself into a chair or walks about with slow steps. She drags along her blue silk dress, which seems to weep as it rustles past the furniture. This rag is all yellow with grease, all torn, ripped at the seams and worn at the folds. Laurence lets it get soiled and tattered, without either cleaning or mending it. She puts it on in the morning, having nothing else to wear, and walks in it the whole day about this miserable chamber, with dishevelled locks, the low-necked ball dress displaying her back and throat. And this dress, this soft silk of a pale blue color, which still shines in spots, is an infamous, twisted, faded and lamentable rag. I experience I know not what keen anguish on seeing these shreds of rich tissue, this luxury dragged about in the midst of want, this woman's bare shoulders reddened by the cold. I shall always remember Laurence walking about, thus clad, in the den sacred to my twentieth year.