She is here! She has given and received the evening kiss. "Sleep well," her father and mother have said, and the child replies: "Oh, yes, I am very sleepy."
Then she quickly shuts the door and breathes a sigh of satisfaction. She is in her own room, she is alone!
Alone! do you believe it? If so, you would be greatly mistaken, for this is the time when she receives her own visitors, and often there is a numerous company.
Oh, be reassured: these guests will not be able to compromise her; they are secret, silent and invisible for all else but her; she alone sees them, talks to them and listens to them.
It is at the summons of her thought that they hasten there, passive and obedient. Then she passes them in review one by one; she examines them from head to foot, she clothes and unclothes them at her will; never has a Captain of infantry, under orders for parade, made a more minute inspection of his conscripts.
Sometimes they come all in a crowd, giving themselves up with her, in the mysterious comers of her imagination, to the wildest frolics. Young people with a stiff collar, beardless sublieutenants, coxcombs with red hands, swells with white cuffs, little heads of wax and little souls of cardboard, run up, ran up, ye pretty puppets.
Dance my loves
You are but dolls.
And she makes them dance on every cord and every tune.
But soon the figures are effaced and blend into one. The pomatumed band disappear into space, whence there rises clearly the image of the chosen one.
He is young, he is dark or fair: she has seen him to-day; she looked at him, he smiled at her, he thinks her pretty.