We returned to Paris in the evening, and not knowing what to do we went to the Varietes.

We went out during one of the entr'actes, and a tall woman passed us in the corridor, to whom my friend bowed.
"Whom are you bowing to ?" I asked.
"Marguerite Gautier," he said.
"She seems much changed, for I did not recognise her," I said, with an emotion that you will soon understand.
"She has been ill; the poor girl won't last long." I remember the words as if they had been spoken to me yesterday.
I must tell you, my friend, that for two years the sight of this girl had made a strange impression on me whenever I came across her.

Without knowing why, I turned pale and my heart beat violently.

I have a friend who studies the occult sciences, and he would call what I experienced "the affinity of fluids"; as for me, I only know that I was fated to fall in love with Marguerite, and that I foresaw it.
It is certainly the fact that she made a very definite impression upon me, that many of my friends had noticed it and that they had been much amused when they saw who it was that made this impression upon me.
The first time I ever saw her was in the Place de la Bourse, outside Susse's; an open carriage was stationed there, and a woman dressed in white got down from it.

A murmur of admiration greeted her as she entered the shop.