by GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ

Then she looked at me. I thought that she was looking at me for the first time. But then, when she turned around behind the lamp and I kept feeling her slippery and oily look in back of me, over my shoulder, I understood that it was I who was looking at her for the first time. I lit a cigarette. I took a drag on the harsh, strong smoke, before spinning in the chair, balancing on one of the rear legs. After that I saw her there, as if she’d been standing beside the lamp looking at me every night. For a few brief minutes that’s all we did: look at each other. I looked from the chair, balancing on one of the rear legs. She stood, with a long and quiet hand on the lamp, looking at me. I saw her eyelids lighted up as on every night. It was then that I remembered the usual thing, when I said to her: “Eyes of a blue dog.” Without taking her hand off the lamp she said to me: “That. We’ll never forget that.” She left the orbit, sighing: “Eyes of a blue dog. I’ve written it everywhere.” I saw her walk over to the dressing table. I watched her appear in the circular glass of the mirror looking at me now at the end of a back and forth of mathematical light. I watched her keep on looking at me with her great hot-coal eyes: looking at me while she opened the little box covered with pink mother of pearl. I saw her powder her nose.When she finished, she closed the box, stood up again, and walked over to the lamp once more, saying: “I’m afraid that someone is dreaming about this room and revealing my secrets.”

And over the flame she held the same long and tremulous hand that she had been warming before sitting down at the mirror.

And she said: “You don’t feel the cold.”

And I said to her: “Sometimes.”

And she said to me: “You must feel it now.”

And then I understood why I couldn’t have been alone in the seat. It was the cold that had been giving me the certainty of my solitude.

“Now I feel it,” I said. “And it’s strange because the night is quiet. Maybe the sheet fell off.”

She didn’t answer. Again she began to move toward the mirror and I turned again in the chair, keeping my back to her. Without seeing her, I knew what she was doing. I knew that she was sitting in front of the mirror again, seeing my back, which had had time to reach the depths of the mirror and be caught by her look, which had also had just enough time to reach the depths and return–before the hand had time to start the second turn–until her lips were anointed now with crimson, from the first turn of her hand in front of the mirror. I saw, opposite me, the smooth wall, which was like another blind mirror in which I couldn’t see her– sitting behind me–but could imagine her where she probably was as if a mirror had been hung in place of the wall.

“I see you,” I told her.

And on the wall I saw what was as if she had raised her eyes and had seen me with my back turned toward her from the chair, in the depths of the mirror, my face turned toward the wall. Then I saw her lower he eyes again and remain with her eyes always on her brassiere, not talking.

And I said to her again: “I see you.” And she raised her eyes from her brassiere again.

“That’s impossible,” she said.

I asked her why.

And she, with her eyes quiet and on her brassiere again: “Because your face is turned toward the wall.”

Then I spun the chair around. I had the cigarette clenched in my mouth. When I stayed facing the mirror she was back by the lamp.

Now she had her hands open over the flame, like the two wings of a hen, toasting herself, and with her face shaded by her own fingers. “I think I’m going to catch cold,” she said.

“This must be a city of ice.” She turned her face to profile and her skin, from copper to red, suddenly became sad.

“Do something about it,” she said. And she began to get undressed, item by item, starting at the top with the brassiere.

I told her: “I’m going to turn back to the wall.”

She said: “No. In any case, you’ll see me the way you did when your back was turned.”

And no sooner had she said it than she was almost completely undressed, with the flame licking her long copper skin.

“I’ve always wanted to see you like that, with the skin of your belly full of deep pits, as if you’d been beaten.”

And before I realized that my words had become clumsy at the sight of her nakedness she became motionless, warming herself on the globe of the lamp, and she said: “Sometimes I think I’m made of metal.” She was silent for an instant. The position of her hands over the flame varied slightly.

I said: “Sometimes in other dreams, I’ve thought you were only a little bronze statue in the corner of some museum. Maybe that’s why you’re cold.”

And she said: “Sometimes, when I sleep on my heart, I can feel my body growing hollow and my skin is like plate. Then, when the blood beats inside me, it’s as if someone were calling by knocking on my stomach and I can feel my own copper sound in the bed. It’s like- -what do you call it–laminated metal.”

She drew closer to the lamp.

“I would have liked to hear you,” I said.

And she said: “If we find each other sometime, put your ear to my ribs when I sleep on the left side and you’ll hear me echoing. I’ve always wanted you to do it sometime.”

I heard her breathe heavily as she talked. And she said that for years she’d done nothing different. Her life had been dedicated to finding me in reality, through that identifying phrase: “Eyes of a blue dog.”

And she went along the street saying it aloud, as a way of telling the only person who could have understood her:

“I’m the one who comes into your dreams every night and tells you: ‘Eyes of a blue dog.’”

And she said that she went into restaurants and before ordering said to the waiters: “Eyes of a blue dog.” But the waiters bowed reverently, without remembering ever having said that in their dreams.

Then she would write on the napkins and scratch on the varnish of the tables with a knife: “Eyes of a blue dog.”

And on the steamed-up windows of hotels, stations, all public buildings, she would write with her forefinger: “Eyes of a blue dog.”

She said that once she went into a drugstore and noticed the same smell that she had smelled in her room one night after having dreamed about me. “He must be near,” she thought, seeing the clean, new tiles of the drugstore. Then she went over to the clerk and said to him: “I always dream about a man who says to me: ‘Eyes of a blue dog.’”

And she said the clerk had looked at her eyes and told her: “As a matter of fact, miss, you do have eyes like that.”

And she said to him: “I have to find the man who told me those very words in my dreams.”

And the clerk started to laugh and moved to the other end of the counter. She kept on seeing the clean tile and smelling the odor. And she opened her purse and on the tiles with her crimson lipstick, she wrote in red letters: “Eyes of a blue dog.”

The clerk came back from where he had been. He told her: Madam, you have dirtied the tiles.”

He gave her a damp cloth, saying: “Clean it up.” And she said, still by the lamp, that she had spent the whole afternoon on all fours, washing the tiles and saying: “Eyes of a blue dog,” until people gathered at the door and said she was crazy.

Now, when she finished speaking, I remained in the corner, sitting, rocking in the chair.

“Every day I try to remember the phrase with which I am to find you,” I said.

“Now I don’t think I’ll forget it tomorrow. Still, I’ve always said the same thing and when I wake up I’ve always forgotten what the words I can find you with are.”

And she said: “You invented them yourself on the first day.”

And I said to her: “I invented them because I saw your eyes of ash. But I never remember the next morning.”

And she, with clenched fists, beside the lamp, breathed deeply: “If you could at least remember now what city I’ve been writing it in.”

Her tightened teeth gleamed over the flame. “I’d like to touch you now,” I said.

She raised the face that had been looking at the light; she raised her look, burning, roasting, too, just like her, like her hands, and I felt that she saw me, in the corner where I was sitting, rocking in the chair.

“You’d never told me that,” she said.

“I tell you now and it’s the truth,” I said.

From the other side of the lamp she asked for a cigarette. The butt had disappeared between my fingers. I’d forgotten I was smoking.

She said: “I don’t know why I can’t remember where I wrote it.”

And I said to her: “For the same reason that tomorrow I won’t be able to remember the words.”

And she said sadly: “No. It’s just that sometimes I think that I’ve dreamed that too.”

I stood up and walked toward the lamp. She was a little beyond, and I kept on walking with the cigarettes and matches in my hand, which would not go beyond the lamp. I held the cigarette out to her. She squeezed it between her lips and leaned over to reach the flame before I had time to light the match.

“In some city in the world, on all the walls, those words have to appear in writing: ‘Eyes of a blue dog,” I said. “If I remembered them tomorrow I could find you.”

She raised her head again and now the lighted coal was between her lips.

“Eyes of a blue dog,” she sighed, remembered, with the cigarette drooping over her chin and one eye half closed.

The she sucked in the smoke with the cigarette between her fingers and exclaimed: “This is something else now. I’m warming up.”

And she said it with her voice a little lukewarm and fleeting, as if she hadn’t really said it, but as if she had written it on a piece of paper and had brought the paper close to the flame while I read: “I’m warming,” and she had continued with the paper between her thumb and forefinger, turning it around as it was being consumed and I had just read “. . . up,” before the paper was completely consumed and dropped all wrinkled to the floor, diminished, converted into light ash dust.

“That’s better,” I said. “Sometimes it frightens me to see you that way. Trembling beside a lamp.”

We had been seeing each other for several years. Sometimes, when we were already together, somebody would drop a spoon outside and we would wake up. Little by little we’d been coming to understand that our friendship was subordinated to things, to the simplest of happenings. Our meetings always ended that way, with the fall of a spoon early in the morning.

Now, next to the lamp, she was looking at me. I remembered that she had also looked at me in that way in the past, from that remote dream where I made the chair spin on its back legs and remained facing a strange woman with ashen eyes.

It was in that dream that I asked her for the first time: “Who are you?”

And she said to me: “I don’t remember.”

I said to her: “But I think we’ve seen each other before.”

And she said, indifferently: “I think I dreamed about you once, about this same room.”

And I told her: “That’s it. I’m beginning to remember now.”

And she said: “How strange. It’s certain that we’ve met in other dreams.”

She took two drags on the cigarette. I was still standing, facing the lamp, when suddenly I kept looking at her. I looked her up and down and she was still copper; no longer hard and cold metal, but yellow, soft, malleable copper.

“I’d like to touch you,” I said again.

And she said: “You’ll ruin everything.”

I said: “It doesn’t matter now. All we have to do is turn the pillow in order to meet again.” And I held my hand out over the lamp. She didn’t move.

“You’ll ruin everything,” she said again before I could touch her. “Maybe, if you come around behind the lamp, we’d wake up frightened in who knows what part of the world.”

But I insisted: “It doesn’t matter.”

And she said: “If we turned over the pillow, we’d meet again. But when you wake up you’ll have forgotten.”

I began to move toward the corner. She stayed behind, warming her hands over the flame. And I still wasn’t beside the chair when I heard her say behind me: “When I wake up at midnight, I keep turning in bed, with the fringe of the pillow burning my knee, and repeating until dawn: ‘Eyes of a blue dog.’”

Then I remained with my face toward the wall. “It’s already dawning,” I said without looking at her. “When it struck two I was awake and that was a long time back.” I went to the door. When I had the knob in my hand, I heard her voice again, the same, invariable. “Don’t open that door,” she said. “The hallway is full of difficult dreams.” And I asked her: “How do you know?” And she told me: “Because I was there a moment ago and I had to come back when I discovered I was sleeping on my heart.” I had the door half opened. I moved it a little and a cold, thin breeze brought me the fresh smell of vegetable earth, damp fields. She spoke again. I gave the turn, still moving the door, mounted on silent hinges, and I told her: “I don’t think there’s any hallway outside here. I’m getting the smell of country.” And she, a little distant, told me: “I know that better than you. What’s happening is that there’s a woman outside dreaming about the country.” She crossed her arms over the flame. She continued speaking: “It’s that woman who always wanted to have a house in the country and was never able to leave the city.” I remembered having seen the woman in some previous dream, but I knew, with the door ajar now, that within half an hour I would have to go down for breakfast. And I said: “In any case, I have to leave here in order to wake up.”

Outside the wind fluttered for an instant, then remained quiet, and the breathing of someone sleeping who had just turned over in bed could be heard. The wind from the fields had ceased. There were no more smells. “Tomorrow I’ll recognize you from that,” I said. “I’ll recognize you when on the street I see a woman writing ‘Eyes of a blue dog’ on the walls.” And she, with a sad smile–which was already a smile of surrender to the impossible, the unreachable–said: “Yet you won’t remember anything during the day.” And she put her hands back over the lamp, her features darkened by a bitter cloud. “You’re the only man who doesn’t remember anything of what he’s dreamed after he wakes up.”

by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)Madame Julie Roubere was expecting her elder sister, Madame Henriette Letore, who had just returned from a trip to Switzerland.The Letore household had left nearly five weeks before. Madame Henriette had allowed her husband to return alone to their estate in Calvados, where some business required his attention, and had come to spend a few days in Paris with her sister. Night came on. In the quiet parlor Madame Roubere was reading in the twilight in an absent-minded way, raising her eyes whenever she heard a sound.

At last, she heard a ring at the door, and her sister appeared, wrapped in a travelling cloak. And without any formal greeting, they clasped each other in an affectionate embrace, only desisting for a moment to give each other another hug. Then they talked about their health, about their respective families, and a thousand other things, gossiping, jerking out hurried, broken sentences as they followed each other about, while Madame Henriette was removing her hat and veil.

It was now quite dark. Madame Roubere rang for a lamp, and as soon as it was brought in, she scanned her sister’s face, and was on the point of embracing her once more. But she held back, scared and astonished at the other’s appearance.

On her temples Madame Letore had two large locks of white hair. All the rest of her hair was of a glossy, raven-black hue; but there alone, at each side of her head, ran, as it were, two silvery streams which were immediately lost in the black mass surrounding them. She was, nevertheless, only twenty-four years old, and this change had come on suddenly since her departure for Switzerland.

Without moving, Madame Roubere gazed at her in amazement, tears rising to her eyes, as she thought that some mysterious and terrible calamity must have befallen her sister. She asked:

“What is the matter with you, Henriette?”

Smiling with a sad face, the smile of one who is heartsick, the other replied:

“Why, nothing, I assure you. Were you noticing my white hair?”

But Madame Roubere impetuously seized her by the shoulders, and with a searching glance at her, repeated:

“What is the matter with you? Tell me what is the matter with you. And if you tell me a falsehood, I’ll soon find it out.”

They remained face to face, and Madame Henriette, who looked as if she were about to faint, had two pearly tears in the corners of her drooping eyes.

Her sister continued:

“What has happened to you? What is the matter with you? Answer me!”

Then, in a subdued voice, the other murmured:

“I have–I have a lover.”

And, hiding her forehead on the shoulder of her younger sister, she sobbed.

Then, when she had grown a little calmer, when the heaving of her breast had subsided, she commenced to unbosom herself, as if to cast forth this secret from herself, to empty this sorrow of hers into a sympathetic heart.

Thereupon, holding each other’s hands tightly clasped, the two women went over to a sofa in a dark corner of the room, into which they sank, and the younger sister, passing her arm over the elder one’s neck, and drawing her close to her heart, listened.

“Oh! I know that there was no excuse for me; I do not understand myself, and since that day I feel as if I were mad. Be careful, my child, about yourself–be careful! If you only knew how weak we are, how quickly we yield, and fall. It takes so little, so little, so little, a moment of tenderness, one of those sudden fits of melancholy which come over you, one of those longings to open, your arms, to love, to cherish something, which we all have at certain moments.

“You know my husband, and you know how fond I am of him; but he is mature and sensible, and cannot even comprehend the tender vibrations of a woman’s heart. He is always the same, always good, always smiling, always kind, always perfect. Oh! how I sometimes have wished that he would clasp me roughly in his arms, that he would embrace me with those slow, sweet kisses which make two beings intermingle, which are like mute confidences! How I have wished that he were foolish, even weak, so that he should have need of me, of my caresses, of my tears!

“This all seems very silly; but we women are made like that. How can we help it?

“And yet the thought of deceiving him never entered my mind. Now it has happened, without love, without reason, without anything, simply because the moon shone one night on the Lake of Lucerne.

“During the month when we were travelling together, my husband, with his calm indifference, paralyzed my enthusiasm, extinguished my poetic ardor. When we were descending the mountain paths at sunrise, when as the four horses galloped along with the diligence, we saw, in the transparent morning haze, valleys, woods, streams, and villages, I clasped my hands with delight, and said to him: ‘How beautiful it is, dear! Give me a kiss! Kiss me now!’ He only answered, with a smile of chilling kindliness: ‘There is no reason why we should kiss each other because you like the landscape.’

“And his words froze me to the heart. It seems to me that when people love each other, they ought to feel more moved by love than ever, in the presence of beautiful scenes.

“In fact, I was brimming over with poetry which he kept me from expressing. I was almost like a boiler filled with steam and hermetically sealed.

“One evening (we had for four days been staying in a hotel at Fluelen) Robert, having one of his sick headaches, went to bed immediately after dinner, and I went to take a walk all alone along the edge of the lake.

“It was a night such as one reads of in fairy tales. The full moon showed itself in the middle of the sky; the tall mountains, with their snowy crests, seemed to wear silver crowns; the waters of the lake glittered with tiny shining ripples. The air was mild, with that kind of penetrating warmth which enervates us till we are ready to faint, to be deeply affected without any apparent cause. But how sensitive, how vibrating the heart is at such moments! how quickly it beats, and how intense is its emotion!

“I sat down on the grass, and gazed at that vast, melancholy, and fascinating lake, and a strange feeling arose in me; I was seized with an insatiable need of love, a revolt against the gloomy dullness of my life. What! would it never be my fate to wander, arm in arm, with a man I loved, along a moon-kissed bank like this? Was I never to feel on my lips those kisses so deep, delicious, and intoxicating which lovers exchange on nights that seem to have been made by God for tenderness? Was I never to know ardent, feverish love in the moonlit shadows of a summer’s night?

“And I burst out weeping like a crazy woman. I heard something stirring behind me. A man stood there, gazing at me. When I turned my head round, he recognized me, and, advancing, said:

“‘You are weeping, madame?’

“It was a young barrister who was travelling with his mother, and whom we had often met. His eyes had frequently followed me.

“I was so confused that I did not know what answer to give or what to think of the situation. I told him I felt ill.

“He walked on by my side in a natural and respectful manner, and began talking to me about what we had seen during our trip. All that I had felt he translated into words; everything that made me thrill he understood perfectly, better than I did myself. And all of a sudden he repeated some verses of Alfred de Musset. I felt myself choking, seized with indescribable emotion. It seemed to me that the mountains themselves, the lake, the moonlight, were singing to me about things ineffably sweet.

“And it happened, I don’t know how, I don’t know why, in a sort of hallucination.

“As for him, I did not see him again till the morning of his departure.

“He gave me his card!”

And, sinking into her sister’s arms, Madame Letore broke into groans– almost into shrieks.

Then, Madame Roubere, with a self-contained and serious air, said very gently:

“You see, sister, very often it is not a man that we love, but love itself. And your real lover that night was the moonlight.”    Word Count: 1464

Author Unknown 

My friend Tom called to say that he has some military business to take care of in a town south of us and wanted to know if he could stop on the way and spend the night before heading to his meeting. I had always known that my wife thought Tom to be great looking and I thought here is my chance to take it a step further. I asked Tom when he was coming in and he said Wednesday about suppertime. I got home on Wednesday to find my wife already home from work and waiting on me. Boy did she look great. She had fixed up her long brown hair, her make up was perfect, and the sundress that she wore was short and showing off her deep dark tan. She had chosen not to wear a bra and her nipples where pressing though the fabric and with the top buttons undone a lot of cleavage was shown.Tom arrived at the time that he said that he would. My wife greeted him at the door and you could tell by his look that he liked what he saw. She gave him a big hug, welcome kiss and told him to go put his bags up, get cleaned up and we would head out to the river bar for some drinks and then supper. Tom did as instructed and we headed out to get into the car.

Tom opened the door for my wife to get into the car, and as she swung her legs Tom and myself got a glimpse of her white g-string. Although he said nothing, I am sure from his smile that he saw the same thing that I did.

We arrived at the bar and had my wife sit between us. The drinks were flowing and my wife loosened up and so did we. I started to run my hand up and down her leg and the more I did the wider she spread them. Soon my hand was at her g-string and it was wet. I eased the g-string to one side and eased my finger into her. She smiled and just gave me a deep wet kiss and whispered in my ear that she was really horny and might cum if I didn’t quit. I asked my wife and Tom that maybe we should go out on the deck and enjoy the view of the setting sun across the lake. They said that it sounded like a good idea and we headed out.

Out on the deck we sat in lounge chairs and with the setting sun going down it cast its evening light down on my wife and made her dark tan glow. She stated that the sun was pretty but that the wind had a slight chill to it. Tom and I both looked at her breasts and the nipples were very well protruding. I reached up and gave her nipples a slight pinch and they grew harder. Tom could not believe that I had done this in front of him and stated that his wife always said doesn’t start unless you can finish. My wife said I couldn’t agree anymore. I saw this as my answer to what I hoped might happen and I suggested that we go back home to have some more drinks and relax.

We left and on the way back home my wife sat in the front with me. I reached over and undid one more button so that I could put my hand in her skirt to play with her breast. I tweaked and rolled the nipple with my hand and she just laid back and enjoyed it. Tom cold sees what I was doing because he was sitting right behind me, and I don’t think that he minded. I then pulled my hand out and ran it up her leg until I could feel the heat from her pussy. I moved my finger on her clit and then stuck it in. She gasped and then just relaxed. At this point I am sure that Tom wanted to see more.Inside the house we fixed drinks and turned on the TV. Hill Street Blues came on and the announcement at the beginning stated adult supervision for this program was necessary. We all wondered why. As we watched the program we figured out why. They had a scene that contained frontal nudity of the woman’s breast. Tom stated that he didn’t think that woman’s breast was as great as my wife’s was, but that he wasn’t really sure since he had never seen them. I said that they were better and with this, I reached up and undid the buttons on her dress and laid her down. I then opened her dress and her braless breast came into view with the rosy nipples very hard. I stated that they must need warming up and with this I sucked on the right one. I then told my wife that it wasn’t fair to give one nipple attention and the other one none. She said you are right and she asked Tom to warm the other one up. He didn’t need to be asked again. As we were sucking on her nipples she started to breathe heavier than normal. I reached down to rub her pussy and found that Tom already had his fingers in her. She knew that I wasn’t the one because I was holding her head and running my hands through her hair.I lifted my wife’s body up and Tom pulled her dress the rest of the way down. I then reached up to pull down her g-string and she lifted her rear to help ease it off. I then told Tom to go first since he was our company. He placed his head between her legs and started to lick her clean- pussy. I stuck my dick in her mouth and she worked on my penis sucking it for all it was worth. She came and then Tom asked her if she wanted more. She said yes to please pull of his pants and fuck her. Tom had his pants off and I was surprised at the length of it. It was approximately 7 inches long but slender. He walked up too her and slowly worked his dick up and down the outside of her pussy. Then he put the head at the opening and slowly entered her. She moaned and he worked it all the way in. He then started to pound her for all that he was worth. I reached down and held her breasts because they were swaying so much, but at the same time pinched and pulled her nipples. My wife came very hard, and then Tom pulled out. I then swapped places with Tom and had my wife get on her hands and knees. I entered her from the rear and gave her pussy all that I could and at the same time stuck my finger into her well-lubricated pussy. I then took my finger and stuck it in her ass and fucked her with my finger and her pussy hard with my dick. She came again and I did also.

We went all to bed together. My wife put on a pair of underwear and Tom and I our boxers. Early in the morning I felt the bed moves and looked to see my wife lifting her ass of the bed for Tom to pull down her panties. Once again, Tom started to fuck my wife, this time she was on top of him riding his dick. I got behind her and stuck my dick it her ass for the first time. Tom and I fucked my wife like this until we both came and then we went to sleep. The next morning Tom left and I went to work.

My wife called me before lunch and asked me if I wanted to go to lunch in the park and I told her yes. She arrived at work and picked me up. We went to the park and she basically attacked me. She said that she was still horny. I pulled down her shorts and ate the cum that was left from the night before until she came. I then fucked her once more.

Tom never came back to see us, but we still keep in contact. Since then we have had threesomes with another guy that works for me and that is another story in itself.

by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)

Word Count: 1921

I was very much interested at that time in a droll little woman. She was married, of course, as I have a horror of unmarried flirts. What enjoyment is there in making love to a woman who belongs to nobody and yet belongs to any one? And, besides, morality aside, I do not understand love as a trade. That disgusts me somewhat.

The especial attraction in a married woman to a bachelor is that she gives him a home, a sweet, pleasant home where every one takes care of you and spoils you, from the husband to the servants. One finds everything combined there, love, friendship, even fatherly interest, bed and board, all, in fact, that constitutes the happiness of life, with this incalculable advantage, that one can change one’s family from time to time, take up one’s abode in all kinds of society in turn: in summer, in the country with the workman who rents you a room in his house; in winter with the townsfolk, or even with the nobility, if one is ambitious.                                                                                                      
I have another weakness; it is that I become attached to the husband as well as the wife. I acknowledge even that some husbands, ordinary or coarse as they may be, give me a feeling of disgust for their wives, however charming they may be. But when the husband is intellectual or charming I invariably become very much attached to him. I am careful if I quarrel with the wife not to quarrel with the husband. In this way I have made some of my best friends, and have also proved in many cases the incontestable superiority of the male over the female in the human species. The latter makes all sorts of trouble-scenes, reproaches, etc.; while the former, who has just as good a right to complain, treats you, on the contrary, as though you were the special Providence of his hearth.

Well, my friend was a quaint little woman, a brunette, fanciful, capricious, pious, superstitious, credulous as a monk, but charming. She had a way of kissing one that I never saw in any one else–but that was not the attraction–and such a soft skin! It gave me intense delight merely to hold her hands. And an eye–her glance was like a slow caress, delicious and unending. Sometimes I would lean my head on her knee and we would remain motionless, she leaning over me with that subtle, enigmatic, disturbing smile that women have, while my eyes would be raised to hers, drinking sweetly and deliciously into my heart, like a form of intoxication, the glance of her limpid blue eyes, limpid as though they were full of thoughts of love, and blue as though they were a heaven of delights.

Her husband, inspector of some large public works, was frequently away from home and left us our evenings free. Sometimes I spent them with her lounging on the divan with my forehead on one of her knees; while on the other lay an enormous black cat called “Misti,” whom she adored. Our fingers would meet on the cat’s back and would intertwine in her soft silky fur. I felt its warm body against my cheek, trembling with its eternal purring, and occasionally a paw would reach out and place on my mouth, or my eyelid, five unsheathed claws which would prick my eyelids, and then be immediately withdrawn.

Sometimes we would go out on what we called our escapades. They were very innocent, however. They consisted in taking supper at some inn in the suburbs, or else, after dining at her house or at mine, in making the round of the cheap cafes, like students out for a lark.

We would go into the common drinking places and take our seats at the end of the smoky den on two rickety chairs, at an old wooden table. A cloud of pungent smoke, with which blended an odor of fried fish from dinner, filled the room. Men in smocks were talking in loud tones as they drank their petits verres, and the astonished waiter placed before us two cherry brandies.

She, trembling, charmingly afraid, would raise her double black veil as far as her nose, and then take up her glass with the enjoyment that one feels at doing something delightfully naughty. Each cherry she swallowed made her feel as if she had done something wrong, each swallow of the burning liquor had on her the affect of a delicate and forbidden enjoyment.

Then she would say to me in a low tone: “Let us go.” And we would leave, she walking quickly with lowered head between the drinkers who watched her going by with a look of displeasure. And as soon as we got into the street she would give a great sigh of relief, as if we had escaped some terrible danger.

Sometimes she would ask me with a shudder:

“Suppose they, should say something rude to me in those places, what would you do?” “Why, I would defend you, parbleu!” I would reply in a resolute manner. And she would squeeze my arm for happiness, perhaps with a vague wish that she might be insulted and protected, that she might see men fight on her account, even those men, with me!

One evening as we sat at a table in a tavern at Montmartre, we saw an old woman in tattered garments come in, holding in her hand a pack of dirty cards. Perceiving a lady, the old woman at once approached us and offered to tell my friend’s fortune. Emma, who in her heart believed in everything, was trembling with longing and anxiety, and she made a place beside her for the old woman.

The latter, old, wrinkled, her eyes with red inflamed rings round them, and her mouth without a single tooth in it, began to deal her dirty cards on the table. She dealt them in piles, then gathered them up, and then dealt them out again, murmuring indistinguishable words. Emma, turning pale, listened with bated breath, gasping with anxiety and curiosity.

The fortune-teller broke silence. She predicted vague happenings: happiness and children, a fair young man, a voyage, money, a lawsuit, a dark man, the return of some one, success, a death. The mention of this death attracted the younger woman’s attention. “Whose death? When? In what manner?”

The old woman replied: “Oh, as to that, these cards are not certain enough. You must come to my place to-morrow; I will tell you about it with coffee grounds which never make a mistake.”

Emma turned anxiously to me:

“Say, let us go there to-morrow. Oh, please say yes. If not, you cannot imagine how worried I shall be.”

I began to laugh.

“We will go if you wish it, dearie.”

The old woman gave us her address. She lived on the sixth floor, in a wretched house behind the Buttes-Chaumont. We went there the following day.

Her room, an attic containing two chairs and a bed, was filled with strange objects, bunches of herbs hanging from nails, skins of animals, flasks and phials containing liquids of various colors. On the table a stuffed black cat looked out of eyes of glass. He seemed like the demon of this sinister dwelling.

Emma, almost fainting with emotion, sat down on a chair and exclaimed:

“Oh, dear, look at that cat; how like it is to Misti.”

And she explained to the old woman that she had a cat “exactly like that, exactly like that!”

The old woman replied gravely:

“If you are in love with a man, you must not keep it.”

Emma, suddenly filled with fear, asked:

“Why not?”

The old woman sat down familiarly beside her and took her hand.

“It was the undoing of my life,” she said.

My friend wanted to hear about it. She leaned against the old woman, questioned her, begged her to tell. At length the woman agreed to do so.

“I loved that cat,” she said, “as one would love a brother. I was young then and all alone, a seamstress. I had only him, Mouton. One of the tenants had given it to me. He was as intelligent as a child, and gentle as well, and he worshiped me, my dear lady, he worshiped me more than one does a fetish. All day long he would sit on my lap purring, and all night long on my pillow; I could feel his heart beating, in fact.

“Well, I happened to make an acquaintance, a fine young man who was working in a white-goods house. That went on for about three months on a footing of mere friendship. But you know one is liable to weaken, it may happen to any one, and, besides, I had really begun to love him. He was so nice, so nice, and so good. He wanted us to live together, for economy’s sake. I finally allowed him to come and see me one evening. I had not made up my mind to anything definite; oh, no! But I was pleased at the idea that we should spend an hour together.

“At first he behaved very well, said nice things to me that made my heart go pit-a-pat. And then he kissed me, madame, kissed me as one does when they love. I remained motionless, my eyes closed, in a paroxysm of happiness. But, suddenly, I felt him start violently and he gave a scream, a scream that I shall never forget. I opened my eyes and saw that Mouton had sprung at his face and was tearing the skin with his claws as if it had been a linen rag. And the blood was streaming down like rain, madame.

“I tried to take the cat away, but he held on tight, scratching all the time; and he bit me, he was so crazy. I finally got him and threw him out of the window, which was open, for it was summer.

“When I began to bathe my poor friend’s face, I noticed that his eyes were destroyed, both his eyes!

“He had to go to the hospital. He died of grief at the end of a year. I wanted to keep him with me and provide for him, but he would not agree to it. One would have supposed that he hated me after the occurrence.

“As for Mouton, his back was broken by the fall, The janitor picked up his body. I had him stuffed, for in spite of all I was fond of him. If he acted as he did it was because he loved me, was it not?”

The old woman was silent and began to stroke the lifeless animal whose body trembled on its iron framework.

Emma, with sorrowful heart, had forgotten about the predicted death–or, at least, she did not allude to it again, and she left, giving the woman five francs.

As her husband was to return the following day, I did not go to the house for several days. When I did go I was surprised at not seeing Misti. I asked where he was.

She blushed and replied:

“I gave him away. I was uneasy.”

I was astonished.

“Uneasy? Uneasy? What about?”

She gave me a long kiss and said in a low tone:

“I was uneasy about your eyes, my dear.”