“Since you seem to belong to the place,” I said to her, “I wonder if you would be so good as to take a message for me. I want you to go to a pastrycook’s⁠—which is apparently in a square, but I don’t know where that is⁠—where there is a carriage waiting for me. One moment! To make quite sure, will you ask if the carriage belongs to the Marquise de Villeparisis? But you can’t miss it; it’s a carriage and pair.”

That was what I wished her to know, so that she should regard me as someone of importance. But when I had uttered the words “Marquise” and “carriage and pair,” suddenly I had a great sense of calm. I felt that the fisher-girl would remember me, and I felt vanishing, with my fear of not being able to meet her again, part also of my desire to meet her. It seemed to me that I had succeeded in touching her person with invisible lips, and that I had pleased her. And this assault and capture of her mind, this immaterial possession had taken from her part of her mystery, just as physical possession does.