ough her own tresses. "It was
lucky he did not think of doing the same with me, or we should have
remained together all our lives. Do you think it is really true that he
no longer loves me at all?"

"Humph--and you, do you still love him?"

"I! I never loved him in my life."

"Yes, Mimi, yes. You loved him at those moments when a woman's heart
changes place. You loved him; do nothing to deny it; it is your
justification."

"Bah!" said Mimi, "he loves another now."

"True," said Marcel, "but no matter. Later on the remembrance of you
will be to him like the flowers that we place fresh and full of perfume
between the leaves of a book, and which long afterwards we find dead,
discolored, and faded, but still always preserving a vague perfume of
their first freshness."

* * * * *

One evening, when she was humming in a low tone to herself, Vicomte Paul
said to Mimi, "What are you singing, dear?"

"The funeral chant of our loves, that my lover Rodolphe has lately
composed."

And she began to sing:--

"I have not a sou now, my dear, and the rule
In such a case surely is soon to forget,
So tearless, for she who would weep is a fool,
You'll blot out all mem'ry of me, eh, my pet?

Well, still all the same we have spent as you know
Some days that were happy--and each with its night,
They did not last long, but, alas, here below,
The shortest are ever those we deem most bright."

CHAPTER XXI

Romeo and Juliet

Attired like a fashion plate out of his paper, the "Scarf of Iris," with
new gloves, polished boots, freshly shaven face, curled hair, waxed
moustache, stick in hand, glass in eye, smiling, youthful, altogether
nice looking, in such guise our friend, the poet Rodolphe, might have
been seen one November evening on the boulevard waiting for a cab to
take him home.

Rodolphe waiting for a cab? What cataclysm had then taken place in his
existence?

At the very hour that the transformed poet was twirling his moustache,
chewing the end of an enormous regalia, and charming the fair sex, one
of his friends was also passing down the boulevard. It was the
philosopher, Gustave Colline. Rodolphe saw him coming, and at once
recognized him; as indeed, who would not who had once seen him? Colline
as usual was laden with a dozen volumes. Clad in that immortal hazel
overcoat, the durability of which makes one believe that it must have
been b