Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/354

“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 round 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 this 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, “I drink on the contrary to its very good health,” and she gave me a look, enough, as they say, to awake the dead. It was indeed the occasion to say so, for she had scarcely finished her toast than I heard my heart singing the O Filii