e sat down on a seat
and gazed sentimentally at the moon.

In a short time he was wholly under the spell of a feverish
hallucination. It seemed to him that the gods and heroes in marble who
peopled the garden were quitting their pedestals to make love to the
goddesses and heroines, their neighbors, and he distinctly heard the
great Hercules recite a madrigal to the Vedella, whose tunic appeared to
him to have grown singularly short.

From the seat he occupied he saw the swan of the fountain making its way
towards a nymph of the vicinity.

"Good," thought Rodolphe, who accepted all this mythology, "There is
Jupiter going to keep an appointment with Leda; provided always that the
park keeper does not surprise them."

Then he leaned his forehead on his hand and plunged further into the
flowery thickets of sentiment. But at this sweet moment of his dream
Rodolphe was suddenly awakened by a park keeper, who came up and tapped
him on the shoulder.

"It is closing time, sir," said he.

"That is lucky," thought Rodolphe. "If I had stayed here another five
minutes I should have had more sentiment in my breast than is to be
found on the banks of the Rhine or in Alphonse Karr's romances."

And he hastened from the gardens humming a sentimental ballad that was
for him the _Marseillaise_ of love.

Half an hour later, goodness knows how, he was at the Prado, seated
before a glass of punch and talking with a tall fellow celebrated on
account of his nose, which had the singular privilege of being aquiline
when seen sideways, and a snub when viewed in front. It was a nose that
was not devoid of sharpness, and had a sufficiency of gallant adventures
to be in such a case to give good advice and be useful to its friend.

"So," said Alexander Schaunard, the man with the nose, "you are in
love."

"Yes, my dear fellow, it seized on me, just now, suddenly, like a bad
toothache in the heart."

"Pass me the tobacco," said Alexander.

"Fancy," continued Rodolphe, "for the last two hours I have met nothing
but lovers, men and women in couples. I had the notion of going into the
Luxembourg Gardens, where I saw all manner of phantasmagorias, that
stirred my heart extraordinarily. Ellegies are bursting from me, I bleat
and I coo; I am undergoing a metamorphosis, and am half lamb half turtle
dove. Look at me a bit, I must have wool and feathers."

"What have you been drinking?" said Alexander impatiently, "you are
chaffing me."

"I