in one of the neighbouring streets a poor girl who was being
marched along by two policemen. I do not know what was the
matter. All I know is that she was weeping bitterly as she kissed
an infant only a few months old, from whom her arrest was to
separate her. Since that day I have never dared to despise a
woman at first sight.



Chapter 2

The sale was to take place on the 16th. A day's interval had been
left between the visiting days and the sale, in order to give
time for taking down the hangings, curtains, etc. I had just
returned from abroad. It was natural that I had not heard of
Marguerite's death among the pieces of news which one's friends
always tell on returning after an absence. Marguerite was a
pretty woman; but though the life of such women makes sensation
enough, their death makes very little. They are suns which set as
they rose, unobserved. Their death, when they die young, is heard
of by all their lovers at the same moment, for in Paris almost
all the lovers of a well-known woman are friends. A few
recollections are exchanged, and everybody's life goes on as if
the incident had never occurred, without so much as a tear.

Nowadays, at twenty-five, tears have become so rare a thing that
they are not to be squandered indiscriminately. It is the most
that can be expected if the parents who pay for being wept over
are wept over in return for the price they pay.