desire amid their clamor of conversation. She saw me, and a little
sound of appeal comes from her across the escort that presses upon her.
But I turn aside and let her go by.

When she and her harness of men have disappeared, I smell in their wake
the odor of Pétrolus. He is lamp-man at the factory. Yellow, dirty,
cadaverous, red-eyed, he smells rancid, and was, perhaps, nurtured on
paraffin. He is some one washed away. You do not see him, so much as
smell him.

Other women are there. Many a Sunday have I, too, joined in all that
love-making.

* * * * * *

Among these beings who chat and take hold of each other, an isolated
woman stands like a post, and makes an empty space around her.

It is Louise Verte. She is fearfully ugly, and she was too virtuous
formerly, at a time when, so they say, she need not have been. She
regrets this, and relates it without shame, in order to be revenged on
virtue. She would like to have a lover, but no one wants her, because
of her bony face and her scraped appearance; from a sort of eczema.
Children make sport of her, knowing her needs; for the disclosures of
their elders have left a stain on them. A five-year-old girl points
her tiny finger at Louise and twitters, "She wants a man."

In the Place is Véron, going about aimlessly, like a dead leaf--Véron,
who revolves, when he may, round Antonia. An ungainly man, whose tiny
head leans to the right and wears a colorless smile. He lives on a few