Little Poems in Prose

miserable café and on what she dined; I fol- lowed her to the reading-room, and I watched her a long while, while she sought in the news- papers with quick glancing eyes, long since burnt out by tears, some news of powerful and personal interest. At last, in the afternoon, under a charming autumn sky, one of those skies whence de- scend the armies of regret and of remem- brance, she seated herself in a garden, aside, far from the crowd, to listen to one of those concerts whose regimental music the people of Paris so enjoy. That was doubtless the little debauch of this innocent old woman, or shall I say of this puri- fied old woman; the well-earned consolation of one of these heavy, friendless days, conversa- tionless, joyless, bare of intimacy, these days which God let fall upon her since many days which God let fall upon her since many years may-be; three-hundred-and-sixty-five times in the year. And yet another. I can never prevent myself from casting a glance, if not wholly sympa- thetic, at least curious, upon the crowd of out- casts who press upon an enclosure of a public concert. Across the night the orchestra throws festival chants, chants of triumph or of pleas- ure. The dresses fall glittering, glances are in-