ll,
Jeanne is going to love me!" Decidedly, my brain was affected.

Near the fountain in the Luxembourg, in front of the old palace where
the senate sits, two little girls were playing. One pushed the other,
who fell down crying,

"Naughty Jeanne, naughty girl!" I rushed to pick her up, and kissed her
before the eyes of her astonished nurse, saying, "No, Mademoiselle, she
is the most charming girl in the world!"

And M. Legrand! I still blush when I think of my conversation with M.
Legrand. He was standing in a dignified attitude at the door of his
shop.

"ITALIAN WAREHOUSE; DRESSED PROVISIONS;
SPECIALTY IN COLONIAL PRODUCE."

He and I are upon good terms; I buy oranges, licorice from him, and rum
when I want to make punch. But there are distinctions. Well, to-day
I called him "Dear Monsieur Legrand;" I addressed him, though I had
nothing to buy; I asked after his business; I remarked to him, "What
a heavenly day, Monsieur Legrand! We really have got fine weather at
last!"

He looked up to the top of the street, and looked down again at me, but
refrained from differing, out of respect.

And, as a matter of fact, I noticed afterward that there was a most
unpleasant drizzle.

To wind up with, just now as I was coming home after dinner, I passed a
workman and his family in the Rue Bonaparte, and the man pointed after
me, saying:

"Look! there goes a poet."

He was right. In me the lawyer's clerk is in abeyance, the lawyer of
to-morrow has disappeared, only the poet is left--that is to say, the
essence of youth freed from the parasitic growths of everyday life.
I feel it roused and stirring. How sweet life is, and what wonderful
instruments we are, that Hope can make us thus vibrate by a touch of her
little finger!

BOOK 2.

CHAPTER VIII. JOY AND MADNESS

May 1st.

These four days have seemed as if they never would end--especially the
last. But now it wants only two minutes of noon. In two minutes, if
Lampron is not late--

Rat-a-tat-tat!

"Come in."

"It is twelve o'clock, my friend; are you coming?"

It was Lampron.

For the last hour I had had my hat on my head, my stick between my legs,
and had been turning over my essay with gloved hands. He laughed at me.
I don't care. We walked, for the day was clear and warm. All the world
was out and about. Who can stay indoors on May Day? As we neared the
Chamber of Deputies, perambulators full of