ON A FROSTY day shortly before Christmas 1864, around noon, there was a knock at my door. I lived, at the time, in a small room I shared with a ragpicker in Batignolles, a dreary worker’s suburb outside the Paris city wall. That day I was alone, which, at this advanced stage of my life, was how I spent most of my days, reclining on the bed or on a tattered divan in a corner of the room, reduced to infirmity by the pox. I had, several months earlier, suffered a paralysis of the left side of my body. Such a simple task as answering the door was beyond my capacities.

When the door opened, I saw in the gloom of the landing the silhouettes of two slender women. Entering the room in their wide dresses, they gladdened it like two upturned bouquets, the first of iris purple and the other of lily white. I invited them to be seated on the divan, which they approached hesitantly before accepting the invitation. In the pearl-gray light that entered the room through a single dirty window, I noticed how exquisitely dressed they were. For warmth, they were draped in furs of fox and ermine, which they did not loosen upon entering as, despite the stove, it was barely warmer inside than out. The woman dressed in mauve wore a veil over her face, which she did not raise. The other had a young face of rare beauty, with alabaster skin and great wide turquoise eyes set far apart. Under the little hat she was removing was a mane of chestnut hair, tied in two chignons at the nape of her neck, with ringlets covering her ears. The other’s hair was, like her face, hidden by a veil, and when I invited her to remove it she replied most politely that she preferred to leave it on if it was all the same to me.

My visitors introduced themselves. The one dressed in purple who would not remove her veil was Mademoiselle Édmonde, while the pretty one introduced herself as Mademoiselle Adélaïde. They spoke in turns, shyly, hesitantly, almost in whispers, as if overawed by a great occasion. They did not tell me their family names but it was evident, by their demeanor, their dress, their manners, and their speech, that they were of the most rarefied provenance, and that such rooms as the one in which I lived were unknown to them. The demoiselles said they were relieved to have finally found me, as some people believed me already dead, while others claimed I had left Paris for the tropical climes of my birthplace.