The Marquise went out at five

C. Mauriac

A pretty girl in tight blue pants runs at top speed through the Paris square and disappears. Her passage stirs eddies of emotion. For a traffic policeman boredom dissipates briefly; he lusts sharply and happily. A woman sneers contemptuously; obviously the girl is a slut, because quite apparently she is wearing no brassiere. A plainclothes detective on a stake-out forgets his ambush to gawk; an aging homosexual glances at the girl in envy; a bookstore owner obsessed with the past history of this quarter of Paris barely sees the girl as she passes before his eyes. And a novelist named Carnejoux, watching the square from his balcony, is excited: first, because he is as lustful as the detective and the traffic cop, and second, because he knows that the beautiful, bouncing runner will make a fine incident in the avant-garde novel he intends to write about an hour's jumble of thoughts in the Carrefour de Buci. Carnejoux is the alter ego of Novelist Claude Mauriac