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for then I meant to do as the heroes in so many novels do, that is, look on at the ceremony concealed behind a pillar in the church, and after the fatal "yes" fall down at full length, with a tremendous crash, senseless on the floor; be carried out by the sympathizing spectators, and so forth. Possessed with this idea, I went to the house earlier than usual one day, like a man out of his mind. I found Pauline alone in the drawing-room, and, before she had time to be frightened at my agitated condition, I fell at her feet, seized her hands, pressed them to my heart, vowed that I loved her to distraction, and, pouring out a flood of tears, said I was the most miserable of mankind, doomed to a cruel death, as she had given her heart and promised her hand to another, before we had met. Pauline let me rage out what I had to say; then, with a charming smile, she made me rise and sit down by her on the sofa, and then she asked me, in a voice of gentle concern: "'"What's the matter with you? Please calm yourself, dear Mr. Marzell, you're in a state which terrifies me." "'I repeated all I had said before, more coherently however. Then Pauline said: "'"But how did you ever get it in your head that I'm in love with anybody, or engaged to be married? There's not a word of truth in either the one story or the other, I can assure you." "'I maintained, on the other hand, that I had been quite certain ever since the first moment I had set eyes on her that she was in love; and as she kept pressing me to explain more clearly, I told her the whole story of that first Monday of ours in the Webersche Zelt. Scarcely had I finished it when Pauline got up and danced about the room with shouts of laughter, crying: "'"Oh! good gracious! It's too delicious altogether! Well! what dreams! what ludicrous absurdities to take in one's head! Oh! I never heard anything like it! it's really beyond everything!" "'I sat nonplussed; Pauline came back to me, took me by the hands, and shook me by them, as one does to rouse a person from a deep sleep. "'"Now please to listen to what I'm going to tell you," she said, trying hard, but not very successfully, to restrain her laughter. "The young man whom you took for a messenger of love was a shopman from Bramigk, the draper's; the note he gave me was from Bramigk himself. He, like the most charming and courteous of shopkeepers as he is, had promised to get me a hat from Paris (I had admired the pa
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