Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/366

it, begins to resemble love, that Mademoiselle Juliet had made use of this stratagem.

At each fresh visit that she paid to Rodolphe Juliet remarked a more pronounced tone of sincerity in what he said. He felt when she was a little behindhand in keeping her appointment an impatience that delighted her, and he even wrote her letters the language of which was enough to give her hopes that she would speedily become his legitimate mistress.

When Marcel, who was his confidant, once caught sight of one of Rodolphe’s epistles, he said to him:

“Is it an exercise of style, or do you really think what you have said here?”

“Yes, I really think it,” replied Rodolphe, “and I am even a bit astonished at it: but it is so. I was a week ago in a very sad state of mind. The solitude and silence that had so abruptly succeeded the storms and tempests of my old household alarmed me terribly, but Juliet arrived almost at the moment. I heard the sounds of twenty-year-old laughter ring in my ears, I had before me a rosy face, eyes beaming with smiles, a mouth overflowing with kisses, and I have quietly allowed myself to glide down the hill of fancy that might perhaps lead me on to love. I love to love.”

However, Rodolphe was not long in perceiving that it only depended upon himself to bring this little romance to a crisis, and it was then that he had the notion of copying from Shakespeare the scene of the love of Romeo and Juliet. His future mistress had deemed the notion amusing, and agreed to share in the jest.

It was the very evening that the rendezvous was appointed for that Rodolphe met the philosopher Colline, just as he had bought the rope-ladder that was to aid him to scale Juliet’s balcony. The birdseller to whom he had