your
ex-mistress is living. What is there to prove that you were not waiting
for her?"

"Although separated from her, special reasons oblige me to live in this
neighborhood. But, although neighbors, we are as distant as if she were
at one pole and I at the other. Besides, at this particular moment, my
ex-mistress is seated at her fireside taking lessons in French grammar
from Vicomte Paul, who wishes to bring her back to the paths of virtue
by the road of orthography. Good heavens, how he will spoil her!
However, that regards himself, now that he is editor-in-chief of her
happiness. You see, therefore, that your reflections are absurd, and
that, instead of following up the half-effaced traces of my old love, I
am on the track of my new one, who is already to some extent my
neighbor, and will become yet more so: for I am willing to take all the
necessary steps, and if she will take the rest, we shall not be long in
coming to an understanding."

"Really," said the poet, "are you in love again already?"

"This is what it is," replied Rodolphe, "my heart resembles those
lodgings that are advertised to let as soon as a tenant leaves them. As
soon as one love leaves my heart, I put up a bill for another. The
locality besides is habitable and in perfect repair."

"And who is this new idol? Where and when did you make her
acquaintance?"

"Come," said Rodolphe, "let us go through things in order. When Mimi
went away I thought that I should never be in love again in my life, and
imagined that my heart was dead of fatigue, exhaustion, whatever you
like. It had been beating so long and so fast, too fast, that the thing
was probable. In short I believed it dead, quite dead, and thought of
burying it like Marlborough. In honor of the occasion I gave a little
funeral dinner, to which I invited some of my friends. The guests were
to assume a melancholy air, and the bottles had crape around their
necks."

"You did not invite me."

"Excuse me, but I did not know your address in that part of cloudland
which you inhabit. One of the guests had brought a young lady, a young
woman also abandoned a short time before by her lover. She was told my
story. It was one of my friends who plays very nicely upon the
violoncello of sentiment who did this. He spoke to the young widow of
the qualities of my heart, the poor defunct whom we were about to inter,
and invited her to drink to its eternal repose. 'Come now,' said she,
raising her glass