e that he can think of nothing but the fire
preparing the feast.

'Hymen and things hymenaeal!' he said, laughing at himself for resuming
the offence on the apology for it. 'I could talk with interest of a
trousseau. I have debated in my mind with parliamentary acrimony about a
choice of wedding-presents. As she is legally free to bestow her hand on
me--and only a brute's horns could contest the fact--she may decide to
be married the day after to-morrow, and get the trousseau in Paris. She
has a turn for startling. I can imagine that if I proposed a run for
it she would be readier to spring to be on the road with me than in
acquiescing in a quiet arrangement about a ceremonial day; partly
because, in the first case, she would throw herself and the rest of
the adventure on me, at no other cost than the enjoyment of one of her
impulses; and in the second, because she is a girl who would require a
full band of the best Berlin orchestra in perpetual play to keep up
her spirits among her people during the preparations for espousing a
democrat, demagogue, and Jew, of a presumed inferior station by birth to
her own. Give Momus a sister, Clotilde is the lady! I know her. I
would undertake to put a spell on her and keep her contented on a
frontier--not Russian, any barbarous frontier where there is a sun. She
must have sun. One might wrap her in sables, but sun is best. She loves
it best, though she looks remarkably well in sables. Never shall I
forget... she is frileuse, and shivers into them! There are Frenchmen
who could paint it--only Frenchmen. Our artists, no. She is very French.
Born in France she would have been a matchless Parisienne. Oh! she's
a riddle of course. I don't pretend to spell every letter of her. The
returning of my presents is odd. No, I maintain that she is a coward
acting under domination, and there's no other way of explaining
the puzzle. I was out of sight, they bullied her, and she
yielded--bewilderingly, past comprehension it seems--cat!--until you
remember what she's made of: she's a reed. Now I reappear armed with
powers to give her a free course, and she, that abject whom you beheld
recently renouncing me, is, you will see, the young Aurora she was when
she came striking at my door on the upper Alp. That was a morning! That
morning is Clotilde till my eyes turn over! She is all young heaven and
the mountains for me! She's the filmy light above the mountains that
weds white snow and sky. By the way