In the cab, beyond the fortifications, which were skirted by the
deserted boulevard, Félicie and Robert held one another in a close
embrace.

"Don't you love your own Félicie? Tell me! Doesn't it flatter your
vanity to possess a little woman who makes people cheer and clap her,
who is written about in the newspapers? Mamma pastes all my notices in
her album. The album is full already."

He replied that he had not waited for her to succeed before discovering
how charming she was; and, in fact, their liaison had begun when she was
making an obscure first appearance at the Odéon in a revival which had
fallen flat.

"When you told me that you wanted me, I didn't keep you waiting, did I?
We didn't take long about that! Wasn't I right? You are too sensible to
think badly of me because I didn't keep things dragging along. When I
saw you for the first time I felt that I was to be yours, so it wasn't
worth while delaying. I don't regret it. Do you?"

The cab stopped at a short distance from the fortifications, in front
of a garden railing.

This railing, which had not been painted for a long time, stood on a
wall faced with pebbles, low and broad enough to permit of children
perching themselves on it. It was screened half-way up by a sheet of
iron with a toothed edge, and its rusty spikes did not rise more than
ten feet above the ground. In the centre, between two pillars of masonry
surmounted by cast-iron vases, the railing formed a gate opening in the
middle, filled in across its lower part, and furnished, on the inside,