On his evening excursions through Montmartre with South American friends, eager to enjoy the puerile and specious delights of all-night restaurants, he had never gone further than this square. Moreover the aspect of this part of Paris is by night far more pleasing than by day.
The crowds passing along the boulevard he was following were of ordinary or vulgar appearance. Evidently the Montmartre of which foreigners spoke with such enthusiasm, whose name was uttered as though it were a magic word by the members of certain youthful groups on the other side of the Atlantic, began at the Place Pigalle. This boulevard Rochechuart was like a frontier region and lacked any distinctive character of its own. Doubtless its inhabitants were poor devils expelled from Montmartre proper by the necessity of finding cheaper lodgings than were available in that famous quarter, or else they were novices in the life of pleasure, who had not yet acquired the clothes nor the manners suitable for a successful night-restaurant career.
As darkness thickened, the number of women on the street increased.... For them the kind uncertainties of twilight were a necessary assistance in their pursuit of men and bread.
Robledo passed them as though blind to their glances and deaf to their whisperings. “Young man,” he thought he heard, and “a handsome fellow.”
“Poor creatures! To get a meal they feel obliged to tell these outrageous lies....”
Suddenly his attention was drawn to one of them. There was little to distinguish her from the others. Like them she was looking at him with bold and provoking glances. But those eyes ... where had he seen those eyes?
She was dressed with a kind of poverty stricken elegance. Her clothes, old and faded, had once, long years ago, been of handsome material, and fashionable cut. From a distance they might still deceive; and she still preserved a slenderness which, with her unusual height, made one forget momentarily the ravages poverty and age had made upon her.
When she saw Robledo stopping to look at her, she smiled at him with childish sincerity. This was a promising catch, the best of the afternoon. Her prospective customer had all the appearance of being a rich foreigner wandering without his bearings in a quarter he had never strayed into before, and to which he was not likely to return. There was no time to lose.
Meanwhile Robledo stood motionless, looking at her with frowning brows as he searched his memory.
“Who is this woman?... Where the devil have I seen her?”