“Dear Lucienne! I am sure that she will be delighted to see me again; and for my part it will give me pleasure to be in her company once more. It is fully twelve years since we met! Twelve years! This infernal time flies with terrifying rapidity, on my word! it seems to me that it was only yesterday; and yet a good many things have happened in the interval! Ah! I hadn’t the gout then, and my sufferings were very much less. To grow old and to suffer--all varieties of annoyance at once! But that is the common law, and as the inimitable Potier says in _Le Chiffonier_: ‘When a man is not satisfied, he must be a philosopher!’--She was very pretty, was Lucienne! Yes, she was one of the prettiest women in Paris! and I was one of the handsomest gallants of my time; indeed, if it weren’t for this infernal gout, I should still be very presentable!--Ow! There was a twinge, I wonder if I am going to have another attack? If so, it would be rather hard for me to go to present my respects to the baroness, as I have asked permission to do in my note. But let me see; as I think it over, it seems to me that Lucienne and I parted on rather bad terms, yes, very bad; she became jealous; what nonsense! she should know better than anyone that jealousy doesn’t keep one from being deceived! But twelve years have passed since that, and there is no better refrigerant than time. The poor baroness must have become reasonable by now; we don’t look at those things from the same point of view at forty as at thirty--if she isn’t forty, she can’t be far from it.--It’s a pity! Women ought never to grow old, nor men either; children are the only ones who ought to grow, and they should stop when they reach maturity.--Ah! there’s a twinge; and yet I am leading the life of an anchorite: no champagne, no truffles! To be sure, the funds are low, very low, in fact. I expected to break the bank at Baden-Baden: I had discovered a very ingenious _martingale_, an infallible method of winning at roulette; I don’t understand how it happened that it was my pocket that was broken! Ah! if I were not short of money, how quickly I would send this dieting business to the devil! and then if I had the gout, there would be some reason for it. They say that it is due to my past excesses; I don’t believe a word of it, for I should have had it sooner!--And he--what has become of him, I wonder, of that dear friend of mine, who was absolutely determined to kill me? In the six weeks since I came back to Paris, it is probable that I should have come face to face with him on the street, if the gout had not kept me in this hotel, in this barrack. But still, it is so long ago, perhaps he is dead. On my honor, I should be very sorry to learn it! I should feel it badly. If he is dead, the baroness must know it.--How gloomy it is here! What a wretched neighborhood! One doesn’t even hear the noise of carriages--I believe, God forgive me, that no carriages pass here. Ah! I will not stay here.