And yet all men are like me.

If they are gifted with acceptable physique they dream of headlong adventures, they attempt them, and our heart never stands still.

But no one acknowledges that, no one, ever.
Then, there were the women who turned me a cold shoulder; and among them all Madame Pierron, a beautiful and genteel woman of twenty-five years, with her black fillets and her marble profile, who still retained the obvious awkwardness and vacant eye of young married women.
Tranquil, staid and silent, she came and went and lived, totally blind to my looks of admiration.
This perfect unconcern aggravated my passion.

I remember my pangs one morning in June, when I saw some feminine linen spread upon the green hedge within her garden.

The delicate white things marshaled there were waiting, stirred by the leaves and the breeze; so that Spring lent them frail shape and sweetness--and life.