in order to conclude our arrangements for the following day. At all
events, I argued, she might forget the engagement, or believe that I had
forgotten it. So I went, taking with me a magnificent bouquet, and an
embroidered satin bag full of _marrons glaces_.

My divinity lived, as she had told me, _sous les toits_--and _sous les
toits_, up seven flights of very steep and dirty stairs, I found her. It
was a large attic with a sloping roof, overlooking a bristling expanse
of chimney-pots, and commanding the twin towers of Notre Dame. There
were some colored prints of battles and shipwrecks wafered to the walls;
a couple of flower-pots in the narrow space between the window-ledge and
the coping outside; a dingy canary in a wire cage; a rival mechanical
cuckoo in a Dutch clock in the corner; a little bed with striped
hangings; a rush-bottomed _prie-dieu_ chair in front of a plain black
crucifix, over which drooped a faded branch of consecrated palm; and
some few articles of household furniture of the humblest description. In
all this there was nothing vulgar. Under other circumstances I might,
perhaps, have even elicited somewhat of grace and poetry from these
simple materials. But conceive what it was to see them through an
atmosphere of warm white steam that left an objectionable clamminess on
the backs of the chairs and caused even the door-handle to burst into a
tepid perspiration. Conceive what it was to behold my adored one
standing in the middle of the room, up to her elbows in soap-suds,
washing out the very dress in which she was to appear on the morrow....
Good taste defend us! Could anything be more cruelly calculated to
disturb the tender tenor of a lover's dreams? Fancy what Leander would
have felt, if, after swimming across the Hellespont, he had surprised
Hero at the washing-tub! Imagine Romeo's feelings, if he had scaled the
orchard-walls only to find Juliet helping to hang out the family linen!

The worst of it was that my lovely Josephine was not in the least
embarrassed. She evidently regarded the washing-tub as a desirable
piece of furniture, and was not even conscious that the act of "soaping
in," was an unromantic occupation!

Such was the severity of this first blow that I pleaded an engagement,
presented my offerings (how dreadfully inappropriate they seemed!), and
hurried away to a lecture on _materia medica_ at the _Ecole Pratique_;
that being a good, congenial, dismal entertainment for the eveni