What man is there who has not experienced a delicious emotion on entering for the first time a young girl’s room?  Who has not breathed with voluptuous delight its sweet and chaste perfumes, and felt his heart soften in its fresh and fragrant atmosphere?

How pretty, neat, and harmonious is everything there.  The most insignificant objects, the most common articles of furniture, have a mysterious and secret aspect there which makes one dream; one contemplates with transport all those nothings, all those little trifles, all those trinkets which young girls delight in, and because they have been touched by a white hand, they appear clothed in enchanting colours.

The fairy who lodges in this place has left a something of herself on all which surrounds her, and that something transforms all into jewels, even the least pin.

But that which above all else arrests the gaze, that which drives the blood to the head and causes the heart to beat, is the bed.

The young girl’s bed, the sanctuary, the delicious nest of love.

There is the pillow on which her head reposes ...  And then the question comes:  What passes in the young head when, softly leaning on the warm down, she lets her thoughts travel into the land of dreams?

  When slumber soft on all
  Around thee is outpoured;
  Oh Pepita, charming maid,
  My love, of what think’st thou?

Here is the place of her body.  Yes, it is there, beneath the discreet eider-down, that she hides her naked charms.  And we begin to dream as well, and we say to ourselves that we would give much to be able to penetrate into this sanctuary at the hour when the divinity is going to bed.

Happy Gyges, lend me your ring that I may assist mutely and invisibly at the sweet mysteries of the night toilette.

She is here!  She has given and received the evening kiss.  “Sleep well,” her father and mother have said, and the child replies:  “Oh, yes, I am very sleepy.”

Then she quickly shuts the door and breathes a sigh of satisfaction.  She is in her own room, she is alone!

Alone! do you believe it?  If so, you would be greatly mistaken, for this is the time when she receives her own visitors, and often there is a numerous company.

Oh, be reassured:  these guests will not be able to compromise her; they are secret, silent and invisible for all else but her; she alone sees them, talks to them and listens to them.

It is at the summons of her thought that they hasten there, passive and obedient.  Then she passes them in review one by one; she examines them from head to foot, she clothes and unclothes them at her will; never has a Captain of infantry, under orders for parade, made a more minute inspection of his conscripts.

Sometimes they come all in a crowd, giving themselves up with her, in the mysterious comers of her imagination, to the wildest frolics.  Young people with a stiff collar, beardless sublieutenants, coxcombs with red hands, swells with white cuffs, little heads of wax and little souls of cardboard, run up, ran up, ye pretty puppets.