So don’t swear at her; bless her with a grateful heart, put a bill of credit in your pocket, and off we’ll sail for China.  We will make a hole in the famous wall, and pry into the secrets of lacquered screens and porcelain cups.  I have a strong desire to taste their swallow-nest soup, their shark’s fins served with jujube sauce, the whole washed down by small glasses of castor oil.  We will have a house painted apple-green and vermilion, presided over by a female mandarin with no feet, circumflex eyes, and nails that serve as toothpicks.  When shall I order the post-horses?

A wise man of the Middle Empire said that we should never attempt to stem the current of events.  Life takes care of itself.  The loss of your fiancee proves that you are not predestined for matrimony, therefore do not attempt to coerce chance; let it act, for perhaps it is the pseudonym of God.

Thanks to this very happy disappearance, your love remains young and fresh; besides, you have, in addition to the Pleasures of Memory, the Pleasures of Hope (considered the finest work of the poet Campbell); for there is nothing to show that your divinity has been translated to that better world, where, however, no one seems over-anxious to go.

Let not my retreat give rise to any unfavorable imputations against my courage.  Achilles, himself, would have incontinently fled if threatened with the blessings in store for me.  From what oriental head-dresses, burnous affectedly draped, golden rings after the style of the Empress of the Lower Empire, have I not escaped by my prudence?

But this is all an enigma to you.  You are in ignorance of my story, unless some too-well-posted Englishman hinted it to you in the temple of Elephanta.  I will relate it to you by way of retaliation for the recital of your love affair with Mlle. Irene de Chateaudun.

You have probably met that celebrated blue-stocking called the “Romantic Marquise.”  She is handsome, so the painters say; and, perhaps, they are not far from right, for she is handsome after the style of an old picture.  Although young, she seems to be covered with yellow varnish, and to walk surrounded by a frame, with a background of bitumen.

One evening I found myself with this picturesque personage at Madame de Blery’s.  I was listlessly intrenched in a corner, far from the circle of busy talkers, just sufficiently awake to be conscious that I was asleep—­a delirious condition, which I recommend to your consideration, resembling the beginning of haschish intoxication—­when by some turn in the conversation Madame de Blery mentioned my name and pointed me out.  I was immediately awakened from my torpor and dragged out of my corner.

I have been weak enough at times, as Gubetta says, to jingle words at the end of an idea, or to speak more modestly, at the end of certain measured syllables.  The Marquise, cognisant of the offence, but not of the extenuating circumstances, launched forth into praise and flattering hyperbole that lifted me to the level of Byron, Goethe, Lamartine, discovered that I had a satanic look, and went on so that I suspected an album.