lle_ [a mail-bag], and finally _malle_ [a trunk], that box of various
forms, covered with all kinds of skin, made of every sort of leather,
with handles, that journeys rapidly, for it serves to carry travelling
effects in, as a man of Delille's school would say.

For you, a man of some sharpness, the Sphinx displays his wiles; he
spreads his wings and folds them up again; he shows you his lion's
paws, his woman's neck, his horse's loins, and his intellectual head;
he shakes his sacred fillets, he strikes an attitude and runs away, he
comes and goes, and sweeps the place with his terrible equine tail;
he shows his shining claws, and draws them in; he smiles, frisks, and
murmurs. He puts on the looks of a joyous child and those of a matron;
he is, above all, there to make fun of you.

You ask the group collectively, "How do you like it?"

"I like it for love's sake," says one.

"I like it regular," says another.

"I like it with a long mane."

"I like it with a spring lock."

"I like it unmasked."

"I like it on horseback."

"I like it as coming from God," says Madame Deschars.

"How do you like it?" you say to your wife.

"I like it legitimate."

This response of your wife is not understood, and sends you a journey
into the constellated fields of the infinite, where the mind, dazzled by
the multitude of creations, finds it impossible to make a choice.

"Where do you put it?"

"In a carriage."

"In a garret."

"In a steamboat."

"In the closet."

"On a cart."

"In prison."

"In the ears."

"In a shop."

Your wife says to you last of all: "In bed."

You were on the point of guessing it, but you know no word that fits
this answer, Madame Deschars not being likely to have allowed anything
improper.

"What do you do with it?"

"I make it my sole happiness," says your wife, after the answers of all
the rest, who have sent you spinning through a whole world of linguistic
suppositions.

This response strikes everybody, and you especially; so you persist in
seeking the meaning of it. You think of the bottle of hot water that
your wife has put to her feet when it is cold,--of the warming pan,
above all! Now of her night-cap,--of her handkerchief,--of her curling
paper,--of the hem of her chemise,--of her embroidery,--of her flannel
jacket,--of your bandanna,--of the pillow.

In short, as the greatest pleasure of the respondents is to see their
Oedipus mystified, as each word guessed by you th