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A FULL-LENGTH PORTRAIT OF MONSIEUR DE LA BRIERE.
Is there in the life of man a more delightful moment than that of a first rendezvous?
Are the sensations then hidden at the bottom of our hearts and finding their first expression ever renewed?
Can we feel again the nameless pleasures that we felt when, like Ernest de La Briere, we looked up our sharpest razors, our finest shirt, an irreproachable collar, and our best clothes?
We deify the garments associated with that all-supreme moment.

We weave within us poetic fancies quite equal to those of the woman; and the day when either party guesses them they take wings to themselves and fly away.

Are not such things like the flower of wild fruits, bitter-sweet, grown in the heart of a forest, the joy of the scant sun-rays, the joy, as Canalis says in the "Maiden's Song," of the plant itself whose eyes unclosing see its own image within its breast?
Such emotions, now taking place in La Briere, tend to show that, like other poor fellows for whom life begins in toil and care, he had never yet been loved.

Arriving at Havre overnight, he had gone to bed at once, like a true coquette, to obliterate all traces of fatigue; and now, after taking his bath, he had put himself into a costume carefully adapted to show him off to the best advantage.