"You can imagine my amazement at this harangue. Instead of apologizing, I overwhelmed her with complaints and reproaches for the sleepless night I had passed at the garden gate. My manner was so genuine and so sincere, that the young widow interrupted me.--'What!' she exclaimed; 'you passed the night in the fields? Pray, why didn't you come in, monsieur?' "'Come in? by what means, madame?' "'Why, with the key to the little gate, which I myself gave you.' "'You gave me the key?' "'Yes, monsieur; last night, when I spoke to you, I put it in your hand.' "Everything was explained. I remembered perfectly that when she whispered to me she had taken my hand; and that was when she gave me the key--or, rather, when she thought that I received it; but, alas! she was mistaken; the key fell noiselessly on the grass, and neither of us noticed it. You see, messieurs, what trifles happiness depends upon. I asked pardon and claimed another assignation; but with women a lost opportunity is seldom recovered.--'Try to find the key,' she said. I hastened to the place where she had spoken to me the night before. Alas! in vain did I scratch the ground and examine every tuft of grass; I did not find the key. A few days later, the pretty blonde went away, and I never saw her again." V FILLETTES, GRISETTES, AND LORETTES I had performed my task; Dumouton and Fouvenard alone remained to be heard. The latter having requested the privilege of speaking last, the man of letters in the yellowish-green coat bowed gracefully and began: "To speak of one's _bonnes fortunes_, messieurs, is to speak of the ladies; with me, it is to speak of fillettes, grisettes, or lorettes; for as to bourgeois dames or great ladies, married or single, I have always deemed them too virtuous to be the objects of my attachment. That is my individual opinion; opinions are free. Allow me, therefore, to indulge in a brief digression concerning fillettes, grisettes, and lorettes. I know that my colleague, Alexandre Dumas, has discussed this subject; but there are subjects that are inexhaustible--always attractive and interesting: women and love enjoy that blessed privilege. "It has been said that Paris is the paradise of women. Ah! messieurs, he who said that can never have visited the tiny chambers, the closets, the attics, sometimes even the garrets, where that charming sex often lacks the first essentials of life; sometimes by its own fault, sometimes by the fault of destiny, or, to speak more accurately, of those cruel monsters of men, who play so important a part in the story of these young women. "The _fillettes_ of Paris are the daughters of honest bourgeois or artisans, whose parents, too much engrossed by their labor or by the care of their business, put them out as apprentices, or as shopgirls, or, as happens in the majority of cases, leave them at home to look after the housework and keep house.