The second visit I paid was, as can easily be guessed, to the poor Blue Duchess herself, as I had begun to call her in my heart; and I forgot the pedantic reminiscence which had inspired Jacques Molan with this name, in making it convey the tender grace, and the fantastic melancholy of one of Watteau’s dreams which are chimerical and caressing, ideal and voluptuous. There was certainly no more difference between the sentimentalism which this pretty child had ingenuously confessed to me on the previous evening, and the practical materialism of her lover, than between the sumptuous new house in the Place Delaborde and the third floor in the modest Rue de la Barouillére where I rang about two o’clock. The faded tints of the badly painted front harmonized with the sordidness of the hall, and the glacial chill of the uncarpeted wooden staircase, the dirty stairs of which sloped towards the street. An air of shabby mediocrity extended over the old building, and the common visiting cards nailed to the doors, at which I was curious enough to look, revealed what sort of tenants dragged out their existence there. These poor houses abound in the old streets near the Faubourg Saint Germain, and as the highest rent is 1,200 francs they are the last haven open to all the waifs of humble middle-class virtue. While I listened to the bell and the sound of approaching footsteps all my impressions were moved at this evidence of sentimental analogy which touched me still more. I wished to discover in the fact that the already well-known actress continued to live here a proof that she had not lied to me when she spoke of her mother’s and her own peaceful life, an obvious sign of a total absence of vanity and an indisputable evidence of her pride. If she had ceased to be modest, she had not sold herself for luxury. She had given herself to love and adoration. Alas! I was very quickly to learn that the temptation for great Parisan elegance, too natural to a fine young creature when she has known and lost it, still composed one of the elements of the moral drama which was being enacted in her.