'This is a tree for a melancholy poet--eh, Clotilde ?--for him to come on it by moonlight, after a scene with his mistress, or tales of her! By the way and by the way, my fair darling, let me never think of your wearing this kind of garb for me, should I be ordered off the first to join the dusky army below.

Women who put on their dead husbands in public are not well-mannered women, though they may be excellent professional widows, excellent!' He snapped the lichen-dust from his fingers, observing that he was not sure the contrast of the flourishing and blighted was not more impressive in sunlight: and then he looked from the tree to his true love's hair.

The tree at a little distance seemed run over with sunless lizards: her locks were golden serpents.
'Shall I soon see your baroness ?' Clotilde asked him.
'Not in advance of the ceremony,' he answered.

'In good time.

You understand--an old friend making room for a new one, and that one young and beautiful, with golden tresses; at first...! But her heart is quite sound.