in seeing pretty girls in trouble.  As she gave no promise of beauty, she was on the point of being placed in a shop, when an old and respectable gentleman, who had known her mamma some years previously, accorded her his protection.  This old gentleman, prudent and provident like all old gentlemen, was a connoisseur, and knew that to reap one must sow.  He resolved first of all to give his protege just a varnish of education.  He procured masters for her, who in less than three years taught her to write, to play the piano, and to dance.  What he did not procure her, however, was a lover.  She therefore found one for herself, an artist who taught her nothing very new, but who carried her off to offer her half of what he possessed, that is to say nothing.  At the end of three months, having had enough of it, she left the nest of her first love, with all she possessed tied up in a cotton pocket handkerchief.

During the four years which followed, she led a precarious existence, sometimes with little else to live upon but hope, which never wholly abandons a young girl who knows she has pretty eyes.  By turns she sunk to the bottom, or rose to the surface of the stream in which she found herself.  Twice had fortune in new gloves come knocking at her door, but she had not the sense to keep her.  With the assistance of a strolling player, she had just appeared on the stage of a small theatre, and spoken her lines rather well, when Noel by chance met her, loved her, and made her his mistress.  Her advocate, as she called him, did not displease her at first.  After a few months, though, she could not bear him.  She detested him for his polite and polished manners, his manly bearing, his distinguished air, his contempt, which he did not care to hide, for all that is low and vulgar, and, above all, for his unalterable patience, which nothing could tire.  Her great complaint against him was that he was not at all funny, and also, that he absolutely declined to conduct her to those places where one can give a free vent to one’s spirits.  To amuse herself, she began to squander money; and her aversion for her lover increased at the same rate as her ambition and his sacrifices.  She rendered him the most miserable of men, and treated him like a dog; and this not from any natural badness of disposition, but from principle.  She was persuaded that a woman is beloved in proportion to the trouble she causes and the mischief she does.

Juliette was not wicked, and she believed she had much to complain of.  The dream of her life was to be loved in a way which she felt, but could scarcely have explained.  She had never been to her lovers more than a plaything.  She understood this; and, as she was naturally proud, the idea enraged her.  She dreamed of a man who would be devoted enough to make a real sacrifice for her, a lover who would descend to her level, instead of attempting to raise her to his.  She despaired of ever meeting such a one.  Noel’s extravagance left her as cold as ice.  She believed he was very rich, and singularly, in spite of her greediness, she did not care much for money.  Noel would have won her easier by a brutal frankness that would have shown her clearly his situation.  He lost her love by the delicacy of his dissimulation, that left her ignorant of the sacrifices he was making for her.