Multiple authors

“ And how the tears rise in our eyes in the gathering twilight of November, at the wailing of the barrel-organ, as it plays some long-forgotten polka!
An old, old polka that used to set all Paris dancing fifteen years ago, when the number of your years was eighteen, madame, or thereabout! Yes! you, poor, faded blonde, who are wearing a blue velvet hat that only looks the shabbier for having new strings, and are wheeling your baby—the third, it is—in his little carriage, beneath the leafless lindens that border the cheerless boulevard of the suburban quarter where you live. ”

“ Dear Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed, I am not the princess Ayesha, neither am I Leila, the slave. My true name is Boudroulboudour. I am a peri of the highest rank, as you may see by my ruby and my wings. As I was passing through the air one night, over your terrace, I heard you express the wish that you might be loved by a peri. The daring aspiration pleased me; ignorant, vulgar mortals, abandoned to terrestrial pleasures, are not visited by such dreams of rare delights. ”

“ That mill of Father Merlier's was truly a very pleasant spot. It was situated right in the heart of Rocreuse, at the place where the main road makes a sharp bend. The village has but a single street, bordered on either side by a row of low, whitened cottages, but just there, where the road curves, there are broad stretches of meadow-land, and huge trees, which follow the course of the Morelle, cover the low grounds of the valley with a most delicious shade. All Lorraine has no more charming bit of nature to show. ”

“ Dominique, from his position behind the soldiers, peered out upon the field, and when the smoke drifted away a little, counted three Prussians extended on their backs in the middle of the meadow. The others had sought shelter among the willows and the poplars. And then commenced the siege.
For more than an hour the mill was riddled with bullets; they beat and rattled on its old walls like hail. The noise they made was plainly audible as they struck the stonework, were flattened, and fell back into the water; they buried themselves in the woodwork with a dull thud. ”

“ I, the poor slave, received and sheltered by your compassion, have dared to love you; but what am I in your eyes? I know that you have made a vow to love none but a peri or sultana: others might be content to have the sincere love of a pure young heart without longing for the daughter of the caliph or the queen of the genii. Look at me; I was fifteen years old yesterday, and it may be that I am as beautiful as that Ayesha whose name you are constantly mentioning in your dreams ”

“ I will go to Venice, and there, on the banks of the Grand Canal, in the heart of that fairy-like city, I will hire the beautiful Mocenigo Palace that costs four livres and ten sous a day; there I will drink in the inspiration of all the memories that the author of "Lara" must have left there. From the depths of my solitude I will inundate the world with a deluge of terza rima, copied from the verse of Spenser, in which my great soul shall find solace; the grove shall do me reverence, tomtits shall sigh, turtle-doves coo, woodcocks shed bitter tears, and all the old owls shriek enviously. ”

“ Such was the spot where Father Merlier's mill enlivened nature run riot with its cheerful clack. The building itself, constructed of wood and plaster, looked as if it might be coeval with our planet. Its foundations were in part laved by the Morelle, which here expands into a clear pool. A dam, a few feet in height, afforded sufficient head of water to drive the old wheel, which creaked and groaned as it revolved, with the asthmatic wheezing of a faithful servant who has grown old in her place. ”

“ A woman passes along the street before the windows of the café; Arthur rushes to the door, hat in hand; this woman that he has just caught sight of has a strange hold upon his imagination. The reason why is this:
Coming out of a bric-à-brac dealer's shop into the street one day, carrying in his arms two plaster figures, an antique helmet and a Chinese parasol, Arthur had encountered face to face a woman whose beauty had produced a deep impression on him. These sudden impressions are more than an empty dream. A single glance served to fender Arthur enamored, miserable, jealous. ”

“ When he reached the end he had only before him the Princess Ayesha, who looked at him with an ironical smile upon her lips.
Like all poets, who are too much wrapped up in their own creations, Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed had forgotten that the finest lines are of no worth as compared with a sincere word or a look that is illumined by the light of love. Peris are like women, it behooves one to read them and grasp them just at the very moment when they are about to wing their way back to heaven, to descend to earth no more. ”

“ Through drinking many glasses of tanglefoot Désirée's image became so deeply imprinted on Patin's heart that he was thinking of her constantly, even while he was out at sea, while he was casting his nets into the water, away out on the broad ocean, on the nights when the wind blew and the nights when it was calm, on the nights when the moon shone and the nights when it was dark. ”

“ It was your wish to marry Leila, the slave: Boudroulboudour, the peri, takes it upon her to replace her. I will be Leila for all the world beside and peri for you alone, for I have your happiness at heart and the world would never forgive you the enjoyment of a felicity greater than its own. Fairy though I be, it would tax all my powers to protect you against the envy and the wickedness of mankind."
These conditions were rapturously accepted by Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed, and the wedding-feast was celebrated just as if he had really married little Leila. ”

“ When evening came I walked slowly past the house of Lucrèce. I saw nothing. I turned and passed it again, with no better result. Three or four evenings in succession, on my way home from the Aldobrandi palace, did I stop and cool my heels beneath those windows, but always to no purpose. The mysterious inhabitant of the house No. 13 was beginning to fade from my memory when, passing through the viccolo about midnight, I distinctly heard a low woman's laugh behind the window-shutter at the very spot where the fair flower-girl had appeared to me. ”

“ On days when there was a heavy sea on he would be standing at the stern managing his vessel, one eye on the bow and one on the canvas, and notwithstanding the care that was necessitated by the narrow and difficult passage, notwithstanding the great waves that came rolling into the contracted channel, mountain-high, he would manage to keep an eye on the women who stood there, drenched by the spray of the breaking waves, waiting for their sailor lads, so that he might recognize his own wife, old Auban's daughter, the good-for-nothing huzzy! ”

“ But what makes the crowning glory of Rocreuse is the coolness of this verdurous nook, even in the hottest days of July and August. The Morelle comes down from the woods of Gagny, and it would seem as if it gathered to itself on the way all the delicious freshness of the foliage beneath which it glides for many a league; it brings down with it the murmuring sounds, the glacial, solemn shadows of the forest. And that is not the only source of coolness; there are running waters of all sorts singing among the copses ”

“ In the midst of the forest is a great oak that is uninhabited now, alas! It was tile dwelling of the late king Pie X, and we make pilgrimages to it, heaving many a deep sigh; but, apart from this transitory grief, our life is as pleasant as we could wish. Our women are not prudes nor are our husbands jealous, but our pleasures are pure and honest, because our hearts are as noble as our tongues are merry and unrestrained. Our pride is unbounded, and if a jay or any such common trash happens to intrude his company upon us we pluck him without mercy. ”

“ It may be imagined that I did not tell my story at the Aldobrandi palace: the marquise was too prudish, and Don Ottavio was too much wrapped up in his politics to be a competent adviser in a love affair. I went and hunted up my painter, however, who knew all Rome, from the cedar to the hyssop, and asked him what he thought of it.
"I think," he said, "that you have seen the phantom of Lucrèce Borgia. What a risk you incurred! Dangerous as she was while living, just think for a moment what she must be now that she is dead! It is enough to make one shake in his shoes." ”

“ I am the son of a blackbird and I am white; I am a white blackbird!"
This discovery, as may well be imagined, modified my ideas considerably. I at once ceased to bewail my fate and began to hold up my head and strut about the gutter, looking out on the world with the air of a conquerer.
"It is no small matter to be a white blackbird," said I to myself; "you don't find them growing on every bush. It was a fine thing for me to do, forsooth, to grieve myself to death because I could find no one like me; it is always so with genius ”

“ Perhaps I am a carrier-pigeon, since I am not a blackbird."
"If you had been a carrier-pigeon," he rejoined, "you would have paid me back for the clip of the beak that I gave you a while ago."
"Well! sir, I will pay you; we won't quarrel over a little thing like that. See! the day is breaking and the storm is passing away. Let me go with you, I beseech you! I am undone, I have not a penny in the world—if you refuse me there is nothing left for me to do but drown myself in this gutter." ”

“ The purity of her voice and the sweetness of the music would have gladened Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed at any other time, for he was extremely susceptible to the charm of poetry and harmony, but now his brain and heart were so full of the woman whom he had seen at Bedreddin's that he gave no attention to Leila's songs.
The next day was kinder to him than the preceding one had been, for he met Ayesha at Bedreddin's shop. To attempt to describe his joy would be a hopeless undertaking; only those who have loved are capable of understanding it. ”

“ With his knife in his pocket, that knife that at need he could hurl with the force of a ball from a musket and plant unerringly in the remote target, he waited, sleeping by the light of the stars, wherever he chanced to be, for an opportunity of approaching Zucarraga and ridding old Garrido of the Carlist chieftain. What was the life of that partisan commander to him? War with artillery, war with the knife, it is war all the same. One has the right to kill when he stakes his own life at the same time. ”

“ Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed told how he had beheld her near the mosque of Hassan the Sultan just as the curtains of her litter had been parted a little, and that since that moment he had been dying with love for her.
"Of a verity," said the lady, "and your passion was of such sudden birth as that? I had thought that love grew not so quickly. I am indeed the woman whom you met yesterday; I was hieing me to the bath in my litter, and as the heat was stifling, I had put up my veil. ”

“ Still, the young girls would now and then venture to stand up for him, for he was altogether a splendid specimen of manhood, was this individual of doubtful antecedents, tall and straight as a young poplar, with a milk-white skin and ruddy hair and beard that seemed to be of gold when the sun shone on them. Now one fine morning it came to pass that Françoise told Father Merlier that she loved Dominique and that never, never would she consent to marry any other young man. ”

“ The cool air of night, the splendor of the heavens, more thickly set with golden spangles than a peri's robe, and in which the moon was displaying her silvery face like a sultana, pale with love, bending over the trellis of her kiosk, brought joy and content to Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed, for he was a poet and could not but be affected by the glorious spectacle that offered itself to his vision. ”

“ Were it in the power of your poor slave to disperse that cloud of melancholy that rests upon your brow, she would deem herself the happiest woman upon earth, and not even upon Ayesha, rich and beautiful though she be, would she look with the eye of envy."
The mention of that name caused Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed to start upon his divan, like a sick man upon whose sore a hand is unintentionally laid; he raised himself partially upon his elbow and cast an inquiring look upon Leila, who maintained a perfectly unruffled countenance, expressive only of a tender solicitude. ”

“ He will never return to his home. What matters it to him. I am the only one that he fears to meet, and I won't do it.
I won't! I won't! I won't!
And if he does return, if he takes possession of his shop again, who is there that can prove that he had my furniture there? My testimony is all there is against him, and I feel that it is beginning to be discredited.
Ah! but no! it was no longer possible to lead such a life. And then I could not keep the secret of what I had seen. I could not keep on living like the rest of the world with the dread that such things might happen me again. ”

“ I know it, I confess it, but there is no use talking; when the gallery has its eyes on me, I can't endure to have people say: 'He has backed down.' To be like that when the scene is laid upon the bridge of Arcola is sublime, but at a baccarat table, while awaiting the turn of a card, it is idiotic, and yet it was owing to nothing in the world but that childish vanity that, after having cut such a dash with my good luck, I was unwilling to submit to the bad when I saw it coming my way. ”

“ I have still enough to keep myself from starving for three days; go and find Karr, if you can get to him through the swarms of wasps [1] that are all the time buzzing and fluttering around his door and against his windows; he has his head stuffed full with the most delightful love-stories that he will relate to you in the interval between a boxing lesson and a tune on his French horn; or wait and catch Jules Janin as he turns the corner of some feuilleton, and he will walk along at your side and improvise such a story as the sultan Schahriar never heard in all his life. ”

“ A deep silence reigned over this picture that one might have taken for the work of the painter's brush, for not a breath, not a sound was there to reveal the presence of a living being: the only noise perceptible was that made by the smoke of Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed's nargile as it passed through the ball of rock-crystal that contained water designed to cool its white wreaths. ”

“ The officer hummed a tune with a careless air. Françoise and Dominique, who had remained in the courtyard, raised themselves to look out over a low wall. They were more particularly interested in a little soldier who had his post on the bank of the Morelle, behind the hull of an old boat; he would lie face downward on the ground, watch his chance, deliver his fire, then slip back into a ditch a few steps in his rear to reload, and his movements were so comical, he displayed such cunning and activity, that it was difficult for any one watching him to refrain from smiling. ”

“ It was Pepa Chegaray. A waltz-tune has the effect of turning young folks' brains, and the guitarero is the grand-master of the art of love—that is the way I feel about it, at least. It was fated that neither Juan nor Pepa were to forget that first interview, that dance in the open air, the music accompanied by smiles and song, more intoxicating than our cider. ”

“ You are not a soldier. I have no orders to give you, but if you do what you say you will do, remind me of what I have said!'
"'Very well!' said Juan. 'We shall meet soon again, general!'
"Old Garrido shrugged his shoulders and wondered for a moment if the man was not a spy.
"Araquil, for his part, allowed his mind to dwell on only one thing: Zucarraga's life was worth a fortune! And that fortune, for which he cared as much as he cared for a raw onion, he longed for it only because it would give him his Pepa. He left Hernani, he disappeared from sight. ”

“ I replied, "it seems to me, respectfully begging your pardon, that I am not of the right color for a pie."
"A Russian pie, my dear, you are a Russian pie! Don't you know that they are white? Poor child, how innocent you are!"
"But how could I be a Russian pie, madame," I rejoined, "when I was born down in the Marais in an old broken porringer?"
"Ah! the simple child! Your folks came here with the invasion, my dear; do you suppose that there are not others in the same case as you? Confide in me and don't allow yourself to worry! ”

“ Still there is no sign of the trick that has been announced in such glowing terms; Arthur, who has been waiting half an hour, loses patience and starts to go, but the juggler runs after him and calls to him:
"Monsieur! Monsieur!"
Every eye is directed upon Arthur. He becomes red in the face and stops.
"Monsieur," says the juggler, "why do you carry away my globes! I cannot earn my living without the implements of my profession." ”

“ Happy woman that you are, in all the plenitude of your beauty of thirty years, say, what memories has it for you, that old galop that the wailing, groaning organ, compeller of dreams, is playing down there upon the bleak boulevard, behind the naked lindens of your garden? ”