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Oh! how merrily we laughed as we composed these hodge-podges of style! With no one else have I ever laughed so heartily as with Lucette,--and we usually roared over things that no one except ourselves could possibly have considered funny.

Over and above the bond of little brother and grown sister there was between us a sympathy springing from our appreciation of the ridiculous, and our notions of what constituted fun were in complete accord.

She was the sprightliest person I ever knew, and sometimes a single word would start us to laughing at our own or our neighbors' expense, until our sides ached and we almost fell upon the floor.
This part of my nature was not, I must confess, in harmony with the gloomy reveries evoked by the pictures of the Book of Revelation, and with my ascetic religious convictions.

But I was already full of strange contradictions.
Poor little Lucette or Lucon (Lucon was the masculine for Lucette, and I used to call her "My dear Lucon"); poor little Lucette was also one of my professors, but one who caused me neither fear nor disgust.