For four or five years I lived in a flat that was in a street near the little Park Monceau. I was there only for certain days in the week. The flat was not the finest in Paris, but was discreet, and the place generally had a well-valeted look. A distinct drawback was that although one end of my street gave on to the park, I could not enjoy that latter place much, for the gates were closed every evening before midnight--just when I most deeply appreciate walking for exercise and to take the pure air. One night at the flat I sat in silent contemplation of two blue china cats that crouched upon a white table. I was wondering whether it would be better to pass the time smoking cigarettes or writing sonnets. Another idea was that it might be better to smoke the cigarettes and stare at the painting on the ceiling. Cigarette, sonnet, or stare? The most important thing at such an hour is to have a cigarette ready to hand and lip. It enshrouds all the most material things with scarves of cloud, fine and celestial. It adds something both to the lights and to the dark of the chamber, taking away the hard mathematics of the angles, and by means of a scented magical spell brings to the agitated human spirit a panacea and peace. It brings, too, the land of dreams. On the particular evening I now speak of there was the intention of doing some writing, and yet the desire to do nothing was active and coercive. Put differently, it was an evening that resembled many other similar evenings of the “unlit lamp and ungirt loin.” Evenings that ended with a full ink-well, sheets of dead-white writing paper, and--a large ash-tray full of golden ends of cigarettes, ashes and unused ideas. Suddenly I was brought back from my “open-eye dreams” by the unexpected ringing of the bell. I raised my head and tried to be positive that on Friday night, the ninth of June, I did not await any one at that hour of the night. A second ring soon came, so I went to the door and drew back the bolt. When the door was opened I saw a woman waiting. She was wrapped in a sort of mantle, like a travelling cloak, fastened around the throat. Above, the head was poised. I saw that her hair was blond, and that she was young. Beneath the shadow of her tresses gleamed very dark eyes. The face was a trifle teasing in its expression, and rather sensual, the mouth being very red. “Do you wish me to come in?” she said, inclining her sweet head upon her shoulder. I drew back, flattened as it were against the wall, suffering from the genuine, the natural astonishment of a man who has to open his door at such an hour to a woman of whom he has not the slightest recollection--a woman, too, who used the intimate form of address, “thou,” in the first phrase she used. “My dear lady,” I said, with a touch of timidity, as I followed her into my chamber, “spare me any blame. Of course I recognize you clearly, but by some lapse of memory I do not recall your name. Is it not Lucienne or Tototte?”