My mistress, Sophie, was in a great muddle. She was getting ready for a ball, and I was very glad she would be out, so that I could write to you. My Sophie is perfectly devoted to balls, although she nearly always gets cross when she’s dressing for them. I cannot conceive, _ma chère_, what can be the pleasure of going to balls. Sophie comes home from them at six o’clock in the morning, and nearly always looks so pale and thin that I can see at once they haven’t given the poor girl anything to eat there. I confess that I couldn’t live like that. If I didn’t get my woodcock with sauce, or the wing of a roast chicken, I—really I don’t know what I should do. I like pudding with sauce, too, but carrots or turnips or artichokes are no good at all. What an extraordinarily uneven style! One can see at once it wasn’t written by a human being; it begins all right and properly, and ends in this doggish fashion. Let’s see another letter. This seems rather a long one. H’m, and it isn’t dated. Oh, my dearest, how I feel the approach of spring! My heart beats as if yearning for something. There is a constant singing in my ears, so that I often raise one foot and stand for several moments listening at the doors. I will confide to you that I have many suitors. Oh! if you knew how hideous some of them are! Sometimes there’s a great, coarse, mongrel watch-dog, fearfully stupid—you can see it written on his face—who struts along the street and imagines that he’s a very important personage and that everybody is looking at him. Not a bit of it! I take no more notice than if I didn’t see him at all. Then there’s such a frightful mastiff that stops before my window. If he were to stand on his hind paws (which the vulgar creature probably doesn’t know how to do) he’d be a whole head taller than my Sophie’s papa, who is rather a tall man, and stout too. This blockhead appears to be frightfully impertinent. I growled at him, but he took no notice at all; he didn’t even frown. He lolled out his tongue, hung down his monstrous ears, and stared in at the window—like a common peasant! But do you imagine, _ma chère_, that my heart is cold to all entreaties? Ah! no.... If you could see one young beau who jumps across the fence from next door! His name is Trèzor.... Oh, my dearest! what a sweet muzzle he has! The devil take it all! What rubbish! And fancy filling up one’s letter with nonsense of that kind. Give me a man! I want to see a human being, I demand that spiritual food that would satisfy my thirsting soul, and instead of that, all this stuff.... Let’s see another page, perhaps it’ll be better.