Strange, weird, inconceivable effects may be met with at night in
Paris. Only those who have amused themselves by watching those effects
have any idea how fantastic a woman may appear there at dusk. At times
the creature whom you are following, by accident or design, seems to
you light and slender; the stockings, if they are white, make you
fancy that the legs must be slim and elegant; the figure though
wrapped in a shawl, or concealed by a pelisse, defines itself
gracefully and seductively among the shadows; anon, the uncertain
gleam thrown from a shop-window or a street lamp bestows a fleeting
lustre, nearly always deceptive, on the unknown woman, and fires the
imagination, carrying it far beyond the truth. The senses then bestir
themselves; everything takes color and animation; the woman appears in
an altogether novel aspect; her person becomes beautiful. Behold! she
is not a woman, she is a demon, a siren, who is drawing you by
magnetic attraction to some respectable house, where the worthy
_bourgeoise_, frightened by your threatening step and the clack of
your boots, shuts the door in your face without looking at you.
A vacillating gleam, thrown from the shop-window of a shoemaker,
suddenly illuminated from the waist down the figure of the woman who
was before the young man. Ah! surely, _she_ alone had that swaying
figure; she alone knew the secret of that chaste gait which innocently
set into relief the many beauties of that attractive form.
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