At noon my toilet was completed and as the clock struck twelve I might have been seen every day rapping at the widow's door.

I generally found one or two callers, not too old, however, to have deserted the ranks of the armchair maids and widows, still on the qui vivre for a husband.

I would chat for a quarter of an hour, and Madame Benoit would give one of her shrugs when fat Mademoiselle Rosalinde would say between two languishing glances: "Ah, how well does Monsieur Dormeiul carry his forty years. It is the effect of regular habits; a well spent existence will bear its fruit."

Naturally I would stammer some polite answer but when Madame shook her head with an 'Ough!' I slipped out of the room. How, I could not say. Far from being timid, heavens knows, I cannot yet understand the terror which seized me when I was in the presence of my terrible neighbour and her friend.

I always took my first meal of the day on the corner of the Rue Montmartre where I read the morning papers. This took one hour and a half altogether.

About two o'clock I strolled along the boulevards and there, in a little shop, I sought my sweet scented correspondence. Mademoiselle Hortense, who kept the little shop, was an old acquaintance of mine.

Ah, Hortense was a queer girl! If just for fun, you had a fancy to stoop down near her, and while her handsome dark eyes gazed fixedly into yours, you slipped your hand dexterously under her petticoats, you would find a firm and well shaped leg in a nicely gartered stocking.

Following the stocking, which led you far, you would have found the contour of a thigh still half covered by the stocking, but as to the other half-oh! you ask me the feeling one has on such occasions? Oh, nothing, but the devilish sensation which always seizes me when I come in contact with the warm, soft palpitating flesh of a woman!

And Mademoiselle Hortense's flesh was so soft in its firmness! You proceeded to pass your hand gently around her thigh, when all at once to your surprise, you could get no further. It was merely her other fat thigh which pressed closely against this one. And there between, a little upwards, was one of nature's marvels, with a tuft of curly hair hidden away in the midst of the soft silky bush you would find it a little more moist than it had been a moment before.