so lively that he was obliged to sit down.

The Duke of Egypt brought an earthenware crock, without uttering a word.
The gypsy offered it to Gringoire: "Fling it on the ground," said she.

The crock broke into four pieces.

"Brother," then said the Duke of Egypt, laying his hands upon their
foreheads, "she is your wife; sister, he is your husband for four years.
Go."

CHAPTER VII. A BRIDAL NIGHT.

A few moments later our poet found himself in a tiny arched chamber,
very cosy, very warm, seated at a table which appeared to ask nothing
better than to make some loans from a larder hanging near by, having
a good bed in prospect, and alone with a pretty girl. The adventure
smacked of enchantment. He began seriously to take himself for a
personage in a fairy tale; he cast his eyes about him from time to
time to time, as though to see if the chariot of fire, harnessed to
two-winged chimeras, which alone could have so rapidly transported him
from Tartarus to Paradise, were still there. At times, also, he fixed
his eyes obstinately upon the holes in his doublet, in order to cling
to reality, and not lose the ground from under his feet completely. His
reason, tossed about in imaginary space, now hung only by this thread.

The young girl did not appear to pay any attention to him; she went and
came, displaced a stool, talked to her goat, and indulged in a pout
now and then. At last she came and seated herself near the table, and
Gringoire was able to scrutinize her at his ease.

You have been a child, reader, and you would, perhaps, be very happy to
be one still. It is quite certain that you have not, more than once (and
for my part, I have passed whole days, the best employed of my life, at
it) followed from thicket to thicket, by the side of running water, on a
sunny day, a beautiful green or blue dragon-fly, breaking its flight in
abrupt angles, and kissing the tips of all the branches. You recollect
with what amorous curiosity your thought and your gaze were riveted
upon this little whirlwind, hissing and humming with wings of purple and
azure, in the midst of which floated an imperceptible body, veiled by
the very rapidity of its movement. The aerial being which was dimly
outlined amid this quivering of wings, appeared to you chimerical,
imaginary, impossible to touch, impossible to see. But when, at length,
the dragon-fly alighted on the tip of a reed, and, holding your breath
the while, you were able to e