"One evening, as we were wandering about at haphazard through one of the most crowded suburbs, my companion surprised me by asking me: 'Did Leonora have any talent for dancing?' When I told him that she had always been perfect in that art, he said, 'We ought to have thought of that before. How strange that I never thought of asking you before.' He was so taken up with his new idea that he did not deign to answer when I inquired what the art of dancing had to do with our search. He hailed a cab; we went back into the city. We stopped at one of those dancing-halls which were then less brilliant, perhaps, but certainly not less crowded than nowadays. 'Look around, if you can see Leonora anywhere! We searched the whole establishment; Leonora was not there. 'Then let us go on.' We drove to another dancing-hall, and, when our search was here also fruitless, to a third, and a fourth. All in vain. I was so exhausted by the sad scenes I had witnessed, by the dust and the heat which filled these crowded rooms, by the efforts to find one certain person among so many, who were constantly changing from place to place, and by the excitement, the anxiety, and the very fear of finding what I was looking for, that I begged my companion to abandon the search, at least for to-night. 'Only one more locality,' he replied; 'I have on purpose left it for the last, because the probability of finding her there is strong enough, but also very painful.' 'How so?' 'The establishments which you have seen so far,' replied the Frenchman, 'are after a fashion quite respectable in spite of what is going on there. The visitors are beyond measure reckless, arrogant, frivolous, but after all not exactly vicious. They are students with their ladies, clerks with their grisettes, well-to-do mechanics who want to have a frolic, in company with their girls. The society into which I am now going to introduce you is far more elegant, but not quite so harmless. It is a house frequented mainly by wild young men of rank from the aristocratic quarters of the town, who seek here compensation for the dullness of their own saloons, and by foreigners who come to Paris to ruin their health and to waste their fortune. The fair sex is such as suits these people. You find here the most beautiful, but also the most corrupt of women, men-catchers, who drive to-day a four-in-hand, and die to-morrow in the hospital--mainly foreigners: Creoles, English, Italian, or German girls, who here find countrymen in numbers. Prepare yourself to look for her--I trust in vain--in this pandemonium. "We reached the place. Broad marble steps led up. My heart beat violently; I could scarcely stand, for something within me told me that I had reached the goal of my wanderings; that the disfigured, swollen head of the dead body would the next moment rise from the black waters.