I suppose that the reader has already discovered that this man was Thornton's companion in the Bois de Boulogne, and the hero of the Salon de Jeu, in the Palais Royal.

I could not have supposed that so noble a countenance, even in its frowns, could ever have wasted its smiles upon a mistress of that low station to which the woman who had met him evidently belonged.

However, we all have our little foibles, as the Frenchman said, when he boiled his grandmother's head in a pipkin.
I myself was, at that time, the sort of person that is always taken by a pretty face, however coarse may be the garments which set it off; and although I cannot say that I ever stooped so far as to become amorous of a chambermaid, yet I could be tolerably lenient to any man under thirty who did.

As a proof of this gentleness of disposition, ten minutes after I had witnessed so unsuitable a rencontre, I found myself following a pretty little bourgeoise into a small sort of cabaret, which was, at the time I speak of (and most probably still is), in the midst of the gardens.

I sat down, and called for my favourite drink of lemonade; the little grisette, who was with an old woman, possibly her mother, and un beau gros garcon, probably her lover, sat opposite, and began, with all the ineffable coquetries of her country, to divide her attention between the said garcon and myself.