[3] The narrator did not trouble to give an anagram for the name this time. CHAPTER II The good my flouting at the hands of the two Parisians had done me--The young girls of Villers-Cotterets--My three friends--First love affairs Still, like François I. after the battle of Pavia, I had not lost everything by my defeat. First there remained to me my boots and my tight-fitting trousers, those two dearly coveted articles, which became the envy and admiration of those young companions upon whom the lovely Laure had so cruelly thrown me. Besides, in the fortnight spent in the company of those two smart girls, I had learnt the first lesson that only the society of women can give. This lesson had taught me to realise the need for that care of my personal appearance which had hitherto never presented itself to my mind as a thing to be daily attended to. Beneath the ridiculous if vanity in changing my mode of dress, underneath the unlucky attempt that I, a poor country lad, had made to attain to the elegant style of a Parisian, there appeared the first dawnings of true elegance--that is to say, of neatness. I had rather good hands, my nails were well shaped, my teeth were large but white, and my feet were singularly small considering my size. I had been ignorant of all these possessions until they had been pointed out to me by the two Parisian girls, who gave me advice as to how I could enhance the value of my natural gifts. And I continued to follow their advice for my own personal satisfaction, after at first following it to please them, to such purpose that by the time they left I had really stepped across the boundary which separated childhood from youth. The crossing had certainly been a rough one, and I had accomplished it with tears in my eyes, coquetry holding one of my hands and chagrin the other. Then--as jaded travellers, when they enter a fresh country, suck bitter fruits, which, however much they set the teeth on edge, leave behind them an irresistible desire to suck other fruits,--when my lips had touched the apple of Eve that men call love, I yearned to make another attempt, even though it should be more painful than the first, and so far as its young girls were concerned, few towns could boast themselves as well favoured as Villers-Cotterets. Never was there such a large park as ours, not even at Versailles; no lawns were greener, not even those at Brighton; nor were any studded with more exquisite flowers than the park of Villers-Cotterets, with its lawns and flower-beds. Three very distinct classes disputed among themselves for the crown of beauty--the aristocracy, the middle classes, and a third class for which I cannot find a name, a pleasant intermediary between the middle class and the people, which belongs to neither, and to which class the dressmakers, seamstresses, and women-shopkeepers of a town belong.