t with displeasure, could
offer tacit requests, could muse in silent melancholy, could indulge in
enthusiastic rapture--could love and hate.

How often have I dreamed of that lovely mouth! how often seen it in my
waking hours! how many horrible Greek words have I learned while musing
thereon!

I could not describe that dinner at the Balnokhazys to the end. Melanie
sat beside me, and my whole attention was directed toward her.

How refined was her behavior! how much elegance there was in every
movement of hers! I could not succeed in learning enough from her. When,
after eating, she wiped her lips with the napkin, it was as if spirits
were exchanging kisses with the mist. Oh, how interminably silly and
clumsy I was beside her! My hand trembled when I had to take some dish.
Terrible was the thought that I might perchance drop the spoon from my
hand and stain her white muslin dress with the sauce. She, for her part,
seemed not to notice me; or, on the contrary, rather, was quite sure of
the fact that beside her was sitting now a living creature, whom she had
conquered, rendered dumb and transformed. If I offered her something,
she could refuse so gracefully; and if I filled her glass, she was so
polite when she thanked me.

No one busied himself very particularly with me. A young boy at my age
is just the most useless article; too big to be played with, and not big
enough to be treated seriously. And the worst of it is that he feels it
himself. Every boy of twelve years has the same ambition--"If only I
were older already!"

Now, however, I say, "If I could only be twelve years old still!" Yet at
that time it was a great burden to me. And how many years have passed
since then!

Only toward the end of dinner, when the younger generation also were
allowed to sip some sweet wine from their tiny glasses, did I find the
attention of the company drawn toward me; and it was a curious case.

The butler filled my glass also. The clear golden-colored liquor
scintillated so temptingly before me in the cut glass, my little
neighbor would so enchantingly deepen the ruddiness of her lips with the
liquor from her glass, that an extraordinarily rash idea sprang up
within me.

I determined to raise my glass, clink glasses with Melanie, and say to
her, "Your health, dear cousin Melanie." The blood rushed into my
temples as I conceived the idea.

I was already about to take my glass, when I cast one look at Melanie's
face, and in