"Accordingly, I took her to her own house—for I had a regard for my own sheets. It was a little working-girl's lodgings in the fifth story, clean and poor, and I spent two delightful hours there. This little girl had a certain grace and a rare attractiveness.
"When I was about to leave the room, I advanced towards the mantelpiece in order to place there the stipulated present, after having agreed on a day for a second meeting with the girl, who remained in bed, I got a vague glimpse of a clock without a globe, two flower-vases and two photographs, one of them very old, one of those proofs on glass called daguerreo-types. I carelessly bent forward towards this portrait, and I remained speechless at the sight, too amazed to comprehend.... It was my own, the first portrait of myself, which I had got taken in the days when I was a student in the Latin Quarter.
"I abruptly snatched it up to examine it more closely. I did not deceive myself—and I felt a desire to burst out laughing, so unexpected and queer did the thing appear to me.
"I asked:
"'Who is this gentleman?'
"She replied:
"'Tis my father, whom I did not know. Mamma left it to me, telling me to keep it, as it might be useful to me, perhaps, one day—'
"She hesitated, began to laugh, and went on:
"'I don't know in what way, upon my word. I don't think he'll care to acknowledge me.'
"My heart went beating wildly, like the mad gallop of a runaway horse. I replaced the portrait, laying it down flat on the mantelpiece. On top of it I placed, without even knowing what I was doing, two notes for a hundred francs, which I had in my pocket, and I rushed away, exclaiming: